Stepping from the storage room into the main shop, we discovered Calvin there standing by the counter. He wore an oversized forest-green backpack that made him look like a peculiar Santa Claus who'd wandered into the wrong holiday. His tinfoil hat gleamed under the flickering fluorescent lights, reflecting tiny fragments of silver across the room.

  "Ah! Good tomorrow, sleepyheads!" he announced, his silver-blue eyes twinkling with genuine delight. "Just in time too. I've returned triumphant from my morning quest with bountiful treasures!"

  “Did you discover the city’s name?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” he replied. “I did find out that our city is being infested with another city called Eureka though, so there’s that… but I refuse to call it Eureka because that would just make Eureka win and that’s probably a bad idea since Eureka is a dastardly, extra-Syntropic entity.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Nessy's tail wagged enthusiastically behind her as she padded forward, her makeshift T-shirt dress swaying around her knees. Calvin began rummaging through his backpack with exaggerated ceremony, the sticky-note eyes adorning his jacket seeming to watch us.

  "For you, good Knight Alecai," he declared, pulling out a pair of bright green sneakers and tossing them to me. They were slightly scuffed and spotted with dark, oily residue but otherwise in decent condition. "Found these in the ruins of what was once a glorious temple of commerce—or as we used to call it, the nearby mall."

  I caught the shoes, examining them with surprise and gratitude. My feet, bare until now, had been increasingly uncomfortable on the debris-strewn floors. "Thanks. These look like they might actually fit. How’d you know my size?”

  “My eyes can see many things,” he grinned. “Basic measurements are especially easy to note thanks my level of Wisdom and Intelligence.”

  “Uh-huh,” I put on the shoes. They felt… comfortable, far better than the muddy construction worker boots I had on yesterday.

  "And for Lady Nessia," Calvin continued, producing a folded bundle of fabric with a flourish, "something to cover your posterior, perhaps?"

  Nessy took the offering, unfolding it to reveal a dark skirt with an elastic waistband. Her ears perked forward as she examined it, nostrils flaring as she sniffed the garment thoroughly.

  "Smells like mothballs and perfume," she announced, but her tail continued its pleased swishing. "But I love it! Thank you!"

  As we donned our gifts—me sitting on a nearby stool to lace up the sneakers, Nessy slipping the skirt under the shirt—Calvin bustled about, arranging newly procured foodstuff cans on the counter like game pieces on a board.

  "You didn't merely find these clothes at random," I observed, noticing the methodical way he moved. "You went looking for them specifically."

  “Of course,” Calvin tapped his tinfoil hat knowingly. "Got up at 4:44 AM to stare at a newly procured mirror in the moonlight and then gave myself a quest! 'Find suitable attire for my guests.' The System rewards those who create purpose, you see."

  “Why?”

  “The System is an extra-Entropic Omni-entity masquerading as an extra-Syntropic Omni-entity,” Calvin explained. “At least that’s what my drawn mouths whispered to me. Like a wicked witch villain masquerading as a hero! Trying to do her Goodest through often rather questionable, nefarious means.”

  “Uh-huh,” I squinted at him, not sure whether he was just making random shit up or actually somehow blessing me with an artifact-divined truth about the new nature of reality. “And how did the System get here to begin with?”

  “The Wormwood Star carried it home when it arrived,” Calvin explained, sounding like a biblical preacher ranting about the end of days. “And upon its tail it carried Hunger, Pestilence, Infinity and Entropy!”

  “Wheee,” Nessy twirled in her skirt, completely ruining the doomsday atmosphere produced by Calvin’s words, the fabric flaring around her thighs.

  "So you can give yourself Quests," she said. "Like video games?"

  "Indeed," Calvin nodded sagely. "Except, you know, with real consequences and the possibility of horrific death." He said this with such cheerful nonchalance that it took a moment for the gravity of his words to register.

  I finished tying my new shoes, appreciating how they fit almost too perfectly. "So you just... decide to do something, and that becomes a quest?"

  "It's a bit more complex than that," Calvin replied, leaning against the counter. "Intent matters. Specificity matters. Challenge matters. The System seems to recognize and reward purposeful action, especially if it involves change, growth, exploration, or simply overcoming deadly obstacles. I think that she feels bad about the whole breaking the world business.”

  “Systemmy broke the world and she feels bad about it?” Nessy chortled.

  “No,” Calvin shook his head. “Our Earth was already doomed, in freefall towards oblivion before the System came. The System did break some stuff when the Wormwood Star collided with our planet, but she’s also trying to fix stuff, in her own, alien, eldritch way.”

  “Can you bless us with a starter Quest, oh wise Sensei?” Nessy bobbed. “I’d like a Quest to smother Alec in a big hug!”

  I squinted at her.

  "The System won’t accept such a mundane Quest,” Calvin said with a smile. “But, I did foresee your desire for Questing and prepared a starter quest for you two, if you're willing."

  “Aww heck. Welp I’m gonna do it anyway ‘cus I wanna,” she rapidly circled and engulfed me in a floofy, still somewhat damp hug.

  "What’s our starter quest?" I voiced out of her embrace.

  "Nothing too dangerous,” our bearded guru said. “Just a little task to help you learn the ropes."

  He led us to the window, pointing to the parking lot in the front.

  “Procure some fluid concrete with a bucket, avoid the nippers and plant a tree in the back.”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “What kind of a tree?” I asked.

  “I smell that the System gave you a low level reward recently,” Calvin said. “Learn how to make it bloom before it dies.”

  “Uhhh…” I blinked.

  “Plant it in my back garden,” he clarified. “Nurture it with your love and concrete-life-fluid and sunlight from a living lamp. Defend it from small, pesky predators until the little tree gets strong enough to defend itself. That is my quest.”

  “Yay!” Nessy commented, still clinging to my side.

  “A hearty quest for a hearty pair!” He grinned at us. “The base goals of every couple should be to plant a tree, procure a house and produce strong kids!”

  I felt my cheeks burning at his words as Nessy’s tail went ballistic with the wagging.

  “Eeeeeeeee,” she squeed into my ear. “Sandwichu is going to be a mom!”

  "A piece of advice before you venture forth, young questers," he added. "Stick together out there. Watch each other's backs."

  He tapped a shelf where several small, crude eye drawings clustered. "My domain reinforces reality around it—makes things more... stable, more predictable. But that stability weakens the farther you get from here. Even low-level things lurking nearby can still take out an eye or a finger if you're not careful."

  Nessy's ears swiveled nervously at his words, her tail curling slightly between her legs. "Low-level things like…?" she repeated, glancing at me with concern.

  "Little ankle-biters," Calvin explained, wiggling his fingers in a grasping motion. "Tiny conceptoids, partial manifestations, reality hiccups. They don't have enough substance yet to kill you outright, but they can chip away at you, bit by bit." He smiled suddenly, the serious moment passing like a cloud across the sun. "Nothing you two can't handle, I'm sure! Just keep your wits about you, yeah? I’ll be about, reinforcing my wards. Yell if you get into a situation you can’t resolve and are dying horribly.”

  “Yes, sir!” Nessy saluted our ‘guru’, finally letting go of me.

  “Why are you helping us? What in this for you?” I wondered, the usual people-mistrust gnawing at my metaphorical heels.

  “Oi, Alec, don’t be rude to our sagely Systemfall Sensei,” Nessy elbowed me.

  “No offense taken,” Calvin laughed. “One of my current Quests is to make you ‘bloom’.”

  "Bloom?" I echoed, staring at Calvin with suspicion that I couldn't quite suppress. The word carried unsettling connotations after my bathtub rebirth experience.

  "Yes!" Calvin clapped his hands together excitedly. "The Systemfall-bound world is a garden where dead things bloom. Don't fret, for it is my quest to help you unlock your full potential! Nurture your growth! Every teacher needs students, every guru needs disciples, every wise man needs someone to impart wisdom to! Otherwise, what's the point of all this accumulated knowledge?" He gestured expansively at his sticky-note covered domain. “I don’t just get rewarded for learning new things about the universe, see, I also get experience and rewards for teaching you things so that you can stand on your own four legs and impart knowledge to others, help humanity survive Systemfall!”

  I glanced at Nessy, who seemed entirely unfazed by Calvin's words. Her tail swished with anticipation, blue eyes bright with excitement at the prospect of our first "quest."

  "Before we go," I said, turning back to Calvin, “I wanted to know about the whole attributes thing. For example, the System says that Nessy has only one point in intelligence, but I can clearly see that she’s not stupid.”

  “Aww you don’t think that I’m as dumb as a brick,” Nessy commented. “How nice.”

  “Attribute stats are NOT mundane rankings of your intelligence or strength levels,” Calvin explained. “They are numerical quantification of one's soul potential."

  "Soul potential?" I repeated.

  “Yes!” Calvin nodded. "Your stats don't necessarily correlate to your physical body, but rather to your soul's capacity to tie itself to particular artifacts, concepts, and realities."

  "So souls… exist," I mused sarcastically. "With… numerical values attached to them."

  “Alec!” Nessy gasped dramatically beside me, her ears flattening against her head. "How can you not believe in souls? Every living thing has one!"

  "Well, you would think that," I replied. "Coming from a world where animals talk and work at the post office."

  "It's not just a belief," she protested, her tail bristling slightly. "I mean, yes I’m a goodly Nazarite and used to go to church every Sunday, but it’s also a sniffable reality! Every pradavarian knows their soul is connected to their pack!”

  “Nazarite?” I asked.

  “I’d show you my little steel cross-sword but the Magnetic-lynx ripped off my necklace,” Nessy clarified. “Many prads worship the leviathan’s slayer.”

  I stared at her, wondering where Christianity had gone sideways in her world.

  "Pre-Systemfall, souls were definitely a matter of faith or philosophy. But now?" Calvin spread his hands wide. "Now everything has a quantifiable soul—not just people and animals, but objects, concepts, even locations. Tools like my Identifier and eye-notes make the immaterial quite measurable."

  I stared at the tinfoil-hat man wondering the weight of a human soul.

  “Negative zero point zero, zero, four grams,” Calvin answered, as if he saw my thoughts with his note-eyes. "The journey is the destination! Now off with you both! I’m expecting a Celestorm by mid-afternoon, and the nippers grow more numerous in the gloom."

  He thrust a cereal box into my hands. “Snack on this while you Quest.”

  [Quest: Make it bloom! Grow a tree from your first basic reward item.] Silver letters danced across my eyes.

  We returned to our room. I chewed on a few handfuls of cereal and then retrieved my stop sign from where I'd propped it against the wall.

  "Are we really going to treat this like a video game quest?" I asked, watching as Nessy rummaged through the shelves, apparently looking for something.

  "Why not?" she replied, her tail wagging as she stretched up on her toes to reach the top shelf. "Quest-thinking provides purpose. A direction." She made a triumphant noise and pulled down the half-eaten sandwich she'd stashed, now wrapped in tinfoil. "Found you, Sandwichu!"

  "Did you wrap that up more?" I stared at her.

  "Yes."

  "..."

  "Don't judge me," she commented, carefully tucking the sandwich into her bag. "Sandwichu is our reward from the System, so that's what we gonna plant!"

  “Right."

  The husky-girl grinned at me, tail wagging as she grabbed the orange bucket from the blue kiddie pool.

  "This is my life now," I mumbled, more to myself than to Nessy. “Planting sandwiches with a dog-person.”

  “Could be worse,” she shrugged, putting on her bag with water bottles. "Come on, big smile now. It's our first syn-pack quest! Yay!"

  Her enthusiasm was infectious, despite my lingering skepticism. I found myself smiling as she bounced on her toes, clearly excited about our impending mission.

  We stepped out of the mini-mart into the broken world beyond Calvin's domain. The air felt different here—thinner somehow, charged with a subtle electricity that made the hair on my arms stand on end. The parking lot stretched before us, cracked asphalt rippling like frozen waves. In the center, a puddle of liquid concrete held shopping carts in its embrace.

  "There's our first objective," I pointed with the stop sign.

  “Yeah,” Nessy sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring. "I smell danger," she muttered, her posture shifting subtly. Gone was the bouncy enthusiasm from moments before, replaced by a predatory alertness of a hunter.

  "Where?" I asked, scanning our surroundings. The empty lot seemed devoid of threats.

  "Everywhere," she whispered, moving closer to me, her shoulder brushing against mine. "Little things. Watching. Waiting."

  “Where particularly?” I asked.

  “The shadows, about nine meters out,” she said. “Don’t blink. Pretend you’re not looking at them.”

  I did. After a minute of staring, I noticed movement at the edges of my vision—quick, darting shapes no larger than rats, skittering between cracks in the pavement and behind the rusted hulks of abandoned cars. Trios of red eyes, dark, glistening, ferromagnetic-fluid-like bodies with far too many tiny limbs.

  “Nippers!” she whispered conspiratorially. “I think that’s the beasties that Sensei Calvin mentioned.”

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