I didn’t unlock anything until I was alone in my room. That gave me time to think about what I wanted to get. The first thing I did was to test Milestones III. I wanted to see if unlocking system stuff would give me experience—though the negative with quests I couldn’t do was a downside. I wanted to see what it counted and cared about.
Feature Unlocked: Milestones III
Current Exp: 131,513
Milestone: G...
2024-10-07 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostA Real Robin Hood
Win the archery contest
Success: Experience gained based on placement
Failure: N/A
Expires: 21 minutes, 32 seconds
I immediately accepted the quest while the instructor went over the rules.
“You will have ten arrows to shoot. The targets are marked with different color bands. The center part of the yellow is worth 10. The outer yellow is 8. Each ba...
I dumped my paper plate into the trash along with the others. Alex and Mac chatted about different types of video games.
“Scary games are really fun!” Alex said.
“No way!” Mac said with a shiver. “Those scare me too much. I love to crash cars!”
“Maybe the cars should be monsters and crash. That would be fun!” Alex compromised.
“Yeah,” Mac agreed.
I walked with them through the camp to where the pools were located. The camp ...
In the month that passed before I would go to camp, I took the time to harvest more vegetables from the garden. The prickly cucumbers came next. I was surprised that I didn’t bleed with just how much I hurt my fingers picking them! The lettuce was a lot easier to harvest, thankfully.
I also got a chance to compare the experience gained by harvesting similar plants that weren’t grown by me at Grandpa Milton’s house. What I discovered was intriguing. The amount of experience was...
After touring the campus, we returned to the hotel for the evening. Though Mom dragged me around to look at the sights in town and nearby, there was nothing for me to do aside from working on my quests as much as I could given the distraction. Finally, it was time to go home.
Now that the university was covering the vast majority of the costs associated with my education, the money from Grandpa Joe was now available for personal projects. The one at the forefront of my mind was test...
Three weeks passed quickly. Though I spent much of my time studying for exams and doing class work, I was able to take advantage of my daily and weekly quest refreshes. I sat at 94,315 experience while Mom drove me to the university two hours away.
Mom packed enough stuff for us to go there, meet with Connor, and spend a couple of days getting to know the area. If all went well, she wanted me to be comfortable and know where things were—especially for when she came to visit.
Sunday was a free day where I was able to do more practical testing of the new features. I accepted all of the quests for the day and started from the easiest ones. Once I had finished each quest, I refreshed it to see what popped up. I then accepted the new quest and followed the same process.
What I found with testing was important for understanding how to exploit it in the future. I was reasonably sure that if a particular requirement—such as running—was included in one quest...
Over the next week-and-a-half—while waiting for the next semester to begin—I used Search to poke around the system a bit. I didn’t have any pressure on me to do work for school or anything else, so I figured that would be a good use of my free time.
I discovered several negative and positive options that did not have any requirements insofar as other features were concerned. Though some of them looked like things I would want to do, I ultimately held off of picking any of them...
Author note: There will be no chapter tomorrow. Next on Thursday.
-------------------
When the snow stopped later in the day, Dad dropped me off at Mom’s. Part of the deal for the extra couple of days was that Mom would get me over New Year’s. I wasn’t sure why they cared so much about splitting the time perfectly, but I imagined it had something to do with the ongoing divorce between them. I was doing my best to ignore everything that was going on with that—and I’d been...
2024-09-17 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor Note: I will be reducing the amount of chapters per week to 4x this wee, 3x next week, and finally 2x after that. I write slowly--typically 2.6 chapters per week--so 2x a week is sustainable. I may throw in an extra 3rd chapter on a Wednesday but that won't be every week. I will announce it before the chapter on those weeks.
This week, I will be skipping Wednesday. Next week will be M-W-F. Subsequent weeks will be M-F.
-------------------------------
The next d...
2024-09-16 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostWhen everything was packed away at Dad’s as much as could be done before actually moving, I used the extra time to rake a few more yards. I couldn’t do too much with finals coming soon, but a few yards over a weekend was doable. I also was able to finish three writing commissions—the first one had such a glowing review that two more followed shortly after. All the work I’d done netted me two more milestones.
Milestone: Earned $100
Exp Gai...
I awoke the following morning to find that the quest reward had been 102 experience. This brought my total available experience to 43,746. Between the costume and the quest, that was an entire day’s worth of experience as a bonus, so I felt satisfied. In the back of my mind, I wondered just how much more I could have gotten if I’d driven around with Dad to scrounge up all of the leftover candy. As it stood—though I didn’t know the correlation between amount I received and the experien...
2024-09-12 16:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostI was glad that I had a weekend to relax after the sheer stupidity I had dealt with during the week. Without any homework to do—for school at least, there were still quests—I had more time to devote towards completing the blanket.
I had decided on a patchwork style with a winter theme so Elizabeth had assisted me in measuring and cutting all of the squares. I laid out the pattern on the floor and picked the squares up row-wise so that I would be able to continue the pattern with...
The rest of the exams on the first day went well, as did the first of the exams on Tuesday. After a quick lunch between tests, I slowly walked to the exam hall. This one was the same auditorium I’d had the first class in all those weeks ago. It was big enough to handle the smaller number of students taking the exam.
I was one of the first to enter the room. I found an open seat and placed my backpack on the floor next to me after taking out a couple mechanical pencils. When I look...
After a week of classes—and getting used to the workload—I decided to find a hobby or club in college to join. If I wanted to learn skills for the future, I may as well start now. I took an hour between classes to go through the options. There were some standard ones like debate or engineering and well as some more specialized ones for people from a specific area or background. Once I had looked through them all, I was disappointed to see that there weren’t any good options.
W...
When I awoke the next morning, I immediately began to collect my things. Mom was due to arrive around lunch time and I wanted to be ready to go when she did. I had bits and bobs all over the house and garage that needed to go into my suitcase. I left my laptop for last so that I could do quests on it while waiting for Mom.
I went to the beach with my cousins and grandparents one last time. Grandma Rose went back to the house early to prepare lunch. We joined her an hour later when e...
The day began much like the others had: first breakfast, then some time on the beach, then lunch, before finally setting time aside for a nap—or at least quiet time. After my cousins’ nap—and my questing time—it was all hands on deck to prepare for the outing.
We would be sitting out on a lawn to watch the baseball game, so Grandma Rose insisted we take two picnic blankets and enough chairs for all of the adults. Because the game started around dinner time, she leaned fully ...
The next morning—after breakfast—I played hide and seek with my cousins. An impromptu quest netted me a handful of experience when I was able to find both of them in under five minutes. Dad got stuck helping Grandpa Milton with some house work, so Aunt Kat took me out to the store to pick up some items after I indicated I wanted to use some of the money Mom and Dad had given me.
“Where to, Eddy?” she asked while buckling me into the booster seat.
“Somewhere I can...
A handful of faces poked out from the the corner behind the garage. I undid my buckle and hopped from the truck and onto the gravel driveway. I waved at the people who had come to greet me.
The youngest was my cousin Marcus. He was around three years old and very energetic. His sister—Olivia—was about my age give or take a couple of months. Their parents, Aunt Kat—Dad’s sister—and Uncle Dave, stood behind them. All four of them were dressed for the heat. Even though the ai...
I woke up the next morning with a plan fully formed. I shot off an email to Grandpa Joe about using some of the cryptocurrency for book marketing before having breakfast downstairs with Dad.
After breakfast, I set the rest of my plan into action.
Feature Unlocked: Hidden Milestones I
Current Exp: 52611
Feature Unlocked: Economic Experience
Current Exp: 51611
Feature Unlocked: Mi...
2024-09-02 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostThree days later was the final day of kindergarten. There was no actual teaching done that day. Instead, we would be spending the day doing contests and having a picnic. Mom couldn’t come—she couldn’t miss work due to an important project she was working on. Instead, Grandpa Joe came along with Dad and his parents.
I got dropped off in the morning at the usual time. There was an air of excitement that permeated everyone and everything. I could feel the energy buzzing ...
I spent the rest of the week trying to get Crafting Experience to work. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what would count as a craft. Part of it—I thought—had to do with the quality of what I was making giving little experience. Another part was probably due to what I was making.
The first thing I tried was to make paper airplanes. As far as crafting materials went, paper was what I had a lot of at Mom’s, so making things from several types of pape...
The mandatory quest weighed on my mind over the next few days. With the seriousness of it, I spent time studying. I wasn’t learning anything new. Rather, I was reviewing things I hadn’t touched in well over a decade. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. Testing was something I had always been good at—so while I was a little stressed, I wasn’t too worried.
I nervously paced back and forth where the line of cars stopped to pick up their kids. Car after car passed to take another chi...
I was unable to figure anything about Harvesting Experience by the time the weekend rolled around—other than how randomly it gave experience. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. I’d gained a handful of experience from it every day, but I was no closer to understanding the mechanics behind it than I had been when I first unlocked it.
Saturday morning was unseasonably warm—hot, even. The big bonus Mom’s place had over Dad’s—not counting the all-im...
Through the rest of the week, I worked on my quests and my writing. Grandpa Joe gave me the go-ahead to start posting the story on a couple of the websites I’d found. Even if it didn’t do well, it would help me to hone my craft for the future.
I considered whether I should do that with other skills as well, but for the time being, writing was just what felt easiest—and cheapest. Most of the rest of what interested me cost money in materials and equipment, so I put those off for anoth...
“Figure anything out?” Dad asked
“Yeah. Looks like I can get a re-do if I need to,” I answered, summarizing the positives and negatives.
“Huh. That’s neat.”
“It’ll definitely help in getting enough for all of the upgrades I’ll need to purchase.”
“That’s true,” Dad said while rubbing his chin. “You’ve checked to see if there were ways of getting more experience, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Are there any
I ran up to my room as soon as I got back from school. Dad had put the laptop on my night stand with a sticky note of the wifi name and password. I eagerly turned the computer on and went through the process of adding the programs I would need in order to be effective—most of what I was used to had yet to be created, and what I was stuck using felt so… archaic.
It would take a while to get used to not having many of the conveniences that I’d grown used to over the...
“Were you able to get through to her?” Dad asked on the way home.
“Yeah,” I replied. “She said she’s got to talk to her father and to you.”
Dad gave me a look that I knew spoke of the anxiety he was feeling. Just the mention of the word ‘talk’ was enough.
“About different things,” I clarified. “For you it’d be about the situation and getting me a computer and Internet so I can earn some money.”
“I see.”
“She t...
Acting my body’s age was hard. The other children were absolutely infuriating to be around. Between playing fast and loose with both reality and the truth—and their incessant need to be correct—it took a bottomless amount of patience on my part. I had the utmost respect for our teacher—Mrs. Forrester—and her magical ability to deal with the complete insanity that was a kindergarten classroom.
Academically, the day’s lessons in math and literacy were mind-numbing...
The next morning, I woke up to Dad knocking on my door. I groaned. The interruption to my sleep the night before kept me up for over an hour before I’d been able to fall back asleep. As much of a waste as Notifications II was to my experience, consistent rest was really important so that I’d be able to complete quests the system gave me.
“Yeah?” I called through the door to let Dad know I was, in fact, awake.
“Time to get up,” he said. “...