[Short Story] Budget System

It started slow.

Some guy claimed to start seeing blue screens. He wasn’t an idiot, mind you. While he did claim it, he made sure to play things off as a joke after finding out no one else was seeing them. No need to get committed to a mental hospital.

Then, a few more people began to see the screens and not all of them knew to shut up. This was a bad time as it was seen as some sort of hysteria. People were being committed left and right.

From there, people kept quiet. Right up until the tipping point. No one is quite sure when that was, what with people keeping mum. Though analysts are putting it at around a third to a half of the population.

The big change came when children began to get inducted. It was easy to put the idiots in padded rooms when they were adults. Once thousands of kids began talking about the screens? Well, okay, some places still tried to lock them up, but the outcry stopped it.

Besides, just because the screens weren’t generally accepted, didn’t mean the Internet hadn’t already decided it was real at that point. The “ignorant public” who were denying it were basically just politicians and the elderly. You know, the people in charge. Though honestly, they wouldn’t have been able to keep their heads buried in the sand so long if those blue screens could have Done anything.

Oh, like sure, they allowed you to see your name and stats. That was it. And it was specifically “you” as the screens couldn’t be shown to anyone else. A few people got into seeing how to make their stats grow, but were mostly disappointed.

Strength was obvious enough, except it wasn’t breaking reality or biology. Which meant it took weeks to see actual results. Then there were the mental stats. They, uh, didn’t really change. Nevermind the fact that most people had the average for them. It took very special circumstances for them to be higher or lower.

Anyway, the blue screens became accepted. Which was inevitable as it only took a little less than four years to cover half the world’s population. Meaning in less than a decade from first appearance, they would have been available to everyone.

It– didn’t really change much. Like, if the screens could have been shared, there would have been a bunch of discrimination. A ton of nasty stuff going down. Except you couldn’t, so the numbers were more for yourself. After all, trying to claim an 18 intelligence, because of course it followed the 3 to 18 range so familiar in the RPG scene, simply meant people wouldn’t believe you.

About the biggest change was people realizing they didn’t actually identify as their given name as much as they thought. More than a few people ended up with their nickname on their status. Though a few eggs cracked when the screen showed unexpected names, Which to be fair, when there are only seven things in the panel and six of them are your stats? Your name being at the top puts it front and center.

The only real ruckus was from the various religions. Except those who actively went to church had been falling and literal blue screens sucked even more wind out of their sails. Didn’t kill them and more than a few splinter sects rose to prominence after embracing the scenes and claiming it was their God that did it.

Either way, the “rollout” continued apace and exactly a decade after the blue screens first showed up, it was complete. There was a little ruckus as a few groups had decided the end of the world was coming. But honestly? It would have been stranger if that wasn’t the case.

Me?

I mostly ignored what was going on. Oh sure, I knuckled down and followed a proper exercise regimen, did some proper meditation, ate healthier, and in what limited capacity I could afford, traveled more to hike. But I wasn’t the only one and if anything, I was on the moderate end.

You would think a literal quantification of your physical and mental abilities would do more? Except, the delusional sorts who believed they were better than others just figured the screen was lying or other people were. A popular narrative was that each screen was personal and so one person’s 11 out of 18 (the highest reported) was worth more than another’s because their range was inherently higher.

As far as I was concerned, that was a bunch of bunk. Though I was shocked at how high my charisma was, seeing as I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. Best guesses by researchers being that it represented force of personality, which, fair.

Anyway, nothing happened at the turn of the decade (yes, I forgot to mention earlier, but the blue screens did show up on a year divisible by 10). So life went on. A year ticks by.

Then suddenly everyone got a nice (it wasn’t very nice) pop-up.

{

[Apocalypse Prevention Onboarding Core]

[Languages Analyzed]

[Inefficiencies detected, multiple languages present, no languages present capable of fully understanding the Terms and Conditions]

[To prevent confusion, genetic language initialized in

5

4

3

2

1]

}

Then everyone got a really bad headache. Worse, no one understood what the screen was saying. In fact, the above is simply the best translation I could find of the message. Don’t know why the blue screens didn’t write it in Human. The language it was gifting us.

And I do personally consider it a gift. Though given some research that happened soon after this, the gift was unlocking the language instead of actually giving us the language. Seems we had it in us the entire time. Made more than a few people look at that old “Tower of Babel” story with a different view.

This was the first true major split for religions. Oh sure, before they rose and fell, but this? By any definition, it was a miracle as suddenly, everyone could talk to one another. Understand one another. And even if you didn’t know what a certain thing was, you would understand that was what someone meant when they said the word for it.

From here, religion shattered into three major camps. The blue screens were the devil, undoing “God’s” will. They were God, finally forgiving us for that whole “tower” incident. Then there were those who decided that “God” wasn’t and rather he was actually some evil force that cursed humanity.

While the religions didn’t merge or anything. The lines did get drawn between them. For instance, monotheistic religions and those who didn’t have a tower of Babel story were more likely to go with the last and villainize the other religions, claiming the others were worshiping demons or what have you.

In the end though, it stayed shockingly even. My guess on that was the differences tended to be split geographically and so they went insular instead of combative. Whatever the case, everyone in the world suddenly had their core language changed to Human, and every other language they knew was reduced to secondary.

In a strange twist, this actually resulted in a boom when it came to learning other languages and creating conlangs. After all, there was now a perfect language to translate everything into. Though Human really ticked off a number of western languages when it didn’t follow all of their conventions. A large group of racists refused to use Human because the langauge “glorified their lessers” or some nonsense.

Whatever the case, it was at this point that I started digging into these blue screens more. They had finally done something other than show you your status, and while most ignored the name of this “system”, I paid attention to it.

This “Apocalypse Prevention Onboarding Core”, which still manages to be an acronym for Apoc, even in Human. Well, it was meant to onboard people, right? Except everyone had tried all the different words you would think to use to get a response. Some even tried things like asking to see the terms and conditions besides the more common slurry of video game commands.

I had a file with thousands of known attempts to interact with the blue screen. And while I wasn’t the one who cracked things or even really helped all that much. I was technically in the group chat that first figured out how to get a response.

The answer was stupid, but you had to ask for something very specific and then wait doing nothing for a long time. As if you were on hold the entire time and doing anything else was like hanging up.

Of course, the first thing pulled up was the terms and conditions. I– I don’t think I am capable of copying down all it said. Even with Human to basically force understanding. While even now I have a decent understanding of what the terms and conditions were, it involved a lot of higher-order things. Stuff that I don’t think can even exist within existence. Or at the very least, couldn’t exist within an area conducive to human life.

It was also exactly like every other terms and conditions the worst of corporations would put out and completely pointless. Why was it pointless? Because given the forced understanding and the fact you couldn’t agree to it unless you had read the whole thing? Everyone refused to agree to it. Which was allowed and had exactly zero repercussions.

Though it was within the terms that we finally got a clue as to what was going on. The blue screens, this “Apocalypse Prevention Onboarding Core”, was sent out ahead of a particularly dense Mana tide. Because of course, magic was real.

Except, originally the system wasn’t sent that far ahead and had caused more than a few troubles. Generally of the sort in opposition to the whole “prevention” part of the name. Even more fun is the fact that apparently Cosmic power doesn’t free you from legal troubles and so the current version was designed by committee and pushed out far ahead of the tide.

It wasn’t directly stated, but once again, forced perfect understanding, but it was clear that the high tide would warp things and cause a bunch of chaos as well as likely kill off most planetary populations. Nasty stuff, and so it was required by law that something be sent out ahead to help with things, this Apoc system. Oh, and since it was legally required, you didn’t need to agree to the terms as you get the system anyway and don’t miss out on anything.

Most people ignored that sort of thing as it was “boring”. Fair enough, perfect understanding doesn’t mean you care about it. I don’t even blame them as the second thing found soon after was a roadmap of coming features. Stuff like spells, an inventory, friends chat, levels, skills, and so on. Except like most roadmaps, this one soon fell apart.

The group chat I was in managed to dig into things once the first deadline passed and the roadmap was updated to note the delay for the friends list (and specifically a list, not the chat or anything else around it). This system code was so bare-bones, it didn’t have the power to implement any of this.

Instead, it was waiting on the tide “raise all boats” as it were. Hell, some of the so-called features weren’t even from the system, but rather just natural to areas with more Mana. The system would simply make them visible and quantified.

It was with that discovery that the main group of people in that chat went silent. They all decided to keep any new knowledge to themselves to benefit from it. Which sucks for them, because I was one of the few to figure out one of the future “features” without the system neutering it. Because, of course, the system wasn’t entirely beneficial.

Or rather, I guess it would be better to say that it was maximally beneficial for humanity as a whole. For instance, it does the whole “higher levels equals longer lifespan” thing because a species only ever has so much species-wide power for that sort of thing. Which humans had unknowingly built up over time and me, along with a few others managed to grab onto before it was locked down. So at least, I’ll be here to see all the changes that the system will cause.

Anyway, this was the second major blow to many religions. The whole point of the system locking it down is so that everyone can have a chance to level up to immortality. But now people are looking back at those stories from that one religious text about the big names in it living to be hundreds of years old.

It really shouldn’t have caused such a big effect, but sometimes people go crazy over things like that. I’m sure I’ll see more of it as time goes on. It will be lonely though as once the Apoc system detected people tapping into the various pools of resources that humanity had, it was forced to pull power from its source and lock them down early.

Whatever the case, I can’t wait for the appearance of magic, monsters, and dungeons. sounds like it will be a fun time. I’ll just have to wait a few hundred years or so for it. Thankfully, I wasn’t one of the idiots who blabbed about what I did. Oh, and I also dipped into the “character creation” pool. Not sure what the pool actually represents, except maybe something to do with birth as babies are being born with odder hair colors and whatnot. Anyway, I figure as an unknown immortal shapeshifter, I have a decent chance of living to see it all.

Should be fun!