A real, productive afternoon was a fairly foreign thing in Chris's bedroom. He was actually studying. The massive, outdated "Java Programming for Beginners" textbook was open on his desk, its pages lined with confusing syntax. But now, thanks to his [Function Comprehension] skill, he could slowly get through it. Glowing white and blue tooltips hovered over the blocks of code, translating the language of Java into the clean, logical structure of the Reality Markup Language. He was learning. He was leveling up his brain. May if he kept it up, he would even gain an Intelligence point.
He was so engrossed in a chapter about conditional statements that he almost missed the shift in the atmosphere of the posts he was monitoring on the Upshur County Community Forum on his second screen. It was a subtle thing, a change in the tone. The usual mix of lost pet announcements and complaints about the price of eggs was being slowly replaced by a new grievance.
He maximized the forum window. A new thread was rapidly climbing to the top of the feed, fueled by a potent frustration. The initial post read:
"Is the Jawbone Park Wi-Fi powered by a potato?"
Chris's heart immediately went out to his fellow citizens. Bad internet was not a trivial matter. It was a violation of modern human rights. He began to read the posts, a litany of suffering.
[Tim M.]: I'm sitting in the park trying to stream the WVU game on my phone and I've seen more of the buffering wheel than I have of the actual game. This is a joke. I have better signal in the middle of the woods.
[Gary L.]: It's easier to get a signal with two tin cans and a string! I was trying to pay my electric bill online and the connection timed out three times. Now my power is going to get shut off because the town's Wi-Fi is from the Stone Age! MY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
[Brenda G.]: Oh, it's just dreadful. I was trying to FaceTime with my grandson in New Mexico and the picture was so blurry. He was trying to show me his new tooth and all I could see was a blurr white blob. It's a real shame for the community.
Chris scrolled through the dozens of comments, each one a small, sad story of disconnection. The System, ever-vigilant and apparently a big proponent of robust public utilities, took notice. A new quest notification appeared.
[Quest: Boost the Signal]
[Objective: The public Wi-Fi service in Jawbone Park is currently operating at a suboptimal level, causing a negative modifier to the [Infrastructure Integrity] stat. Improve the service to a functional level.]
[Reward: 150 XP, +5 Infrastructure Integrity, ???]
He had his mission. This wasn't just a quest; it was a moral imperative. No citizen of Buckhannon should have to suffer through a blurry FaceTime call with their grandchild. He was a Reality Architect. And the town's infrastructure was crumbling.
He drove to Jawbone Park, a man on a mission of mercy. The park was pleasant, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the green grass. He saw several people scattered on the benches of the covered picnic tables, all of them staring at their phones and laptops with the same expression of deep frustration.
One young woman in particular caught his eye. She was sitting on a bench near the center of the row of covered tables, a laptop covered in colorful, nerdy stickers open in front of her. She had headphones on, and she was muttering angrily at her screen, her brow furrowed in a look of rage.
Chris, feeling uncharacteristically bold after his recent social successes with Jessica and Mrs. Gable, decided to make his approach. This was field reconnaissance, and she was a primary source. He sat on a nearby bench, affecting a casual, "just-a-guy-enjoying-the-park" posture.
"Wi-Fi not working?" he asked, his voice a carefully calibrated instrument of shared misery.
The young woman looked up, startled. She pulled off her headphones. She had bright, intelligent eyes and a no-nonsense expression. "Working is a strong word," she vented, relieved to have someone to complain to. "It's more like... a suggestion of internet. It's like trying to drink a milkshake through a coffee stirrer."
Chris chuckled. "I know the feeling."
"I'm a grad student at Wesleyan," she continued, her frustration pouring out of her. "I'm trying to upload my final research paper for my sociology class. It's a hundred and fifty pages with embedded data sets. It's a huge file. And the connection keeps timing out. My professor is going to kill me if I don't get this in by the deadline."
"That's rough," Chris said, a note of empathy in his voice. He knew the pain of a failed upload, the agony of a progress bar that refuses to progress.
While the student, whose name he learned was Monika, continued to rant about the wi-fi and the dread of academic deadlines, Chris discretely got to work. His eyes drifted to a small gray utility box mounted on a pole near the edge of the park.
He activated his [INSPECT (Tier 2)] ability, targeting the municipal router inside the locked box. He pushed his [Causal Analysis Module] to its limits, performing a deep, non-invasive diagnostic.
The data window appeared.
[Object: Municipal Wi-Fi Router (Model WR-2008)]
[Status: Degraded (Signal Output Strength: 55%)]
[Cause of Malfunction: A recursive error in a 2018 firmware update is causing a memory leak, which is throttling the signal output. The error is triggered by high-volume data requests.]
[Probable Fix (78% Chance): A forced power cycle (hard reboot) will clear the faulty software cache and restore the device to its optimal, pre-error configuration.]
The problem wasn't a hardware failure. It was a software glitch. A buggy line of code or something like that from a five-year-old update was the source of the entire park's misery. And the solution was the oldest, most effective tool in the IT professional's arsenal: turning it off and on again.
He now had a plan. He couldn't touch the router. He couldn't open the locked box. But he could affect the power.
He subtly shifted his gaze from the router box to the electrical transformer mounted on the utility pole above it, a large, gray cylinder that buzzed with a quiet, electrical energy. He focused his [Minor Probability Manipulation] skill, his Nudge, on the transformer. He didn't try to cause a blackout. He just wanted to increase the probability of a "momentary power fluctuation." The kind of thing that happens all the time in a rural town with an aging power grid.
He executed the Nudge. A small portion of his EP bar vanished. The cost was minimal.
A nearby streetlight, which had just flickered on as the afternoon sun began to dip lower, suddenly went out. It was dark for a full three seconds, and then it flickered back to life. The router inside the gray box, its power source momentarily interrupted, immediately began its reboot sequence, its internal memory wiped clean of the faulty software cache.
A moment after Chris confirmed the change in the router's status in his HUD, Monika's laptop, which had been displaying a spinning wheel of death, suddenly chimed. It was a bright, cheerful sound.
The progress bar for her upload, which had been stuck at 77% for the last ten minutes, instantly filled. A large "UPLOAD COMPLETE" message appeared on her screen.
Monika stared at the screen in disbelief. "No way," she whispered, her eyes wide. She quickly opened a new tab and ran a speed test. The on-screen speedometer shot across the dial, landing in the high-speed, green zone. "Whoa. The signal is amazing all of a sudden! The download speed is insane! I guess that power flicker must have fixed it!"
Chris just smiled, a quiet, knowing, and deeply satisfying smile. "Guess you got lucky."
Monika's face broke into a wide, relieved grin. "I guess I did. Or maybe you're my good luck charm," she said, jokingly. "You show up, and suddenly my technological nightmare is over." She began to pack up her laptop, her mood completely transformed from stressed-out grad student to a carefree woman whose weekend had just been saved. "Hey, I owe you one. For listening to me vent, at least. We should hang out again sometime. Under less stressful circumstances."
"Yeah," Chris said, a warmth spreading through his chest. "I'd like that."
They exchanged contact info, a simple, normal social interaction that felt like a major personal victory.
A quest notification flashed in his HUD, the satisfying chime sounding in his mind.
[Quest Completed! 150 XP Awarded!]
[+5 Infrastructure Integrity]
[+1 Class Skill Point]
A second notification immediately followed.
[New Ally Gained: Monika Moller]
[Ally Trait: Resourceful. Provides a +5% bonus to all problem-solving checks when in a party.]
Chris left the park, the setting sun casting a warm glow on the now-Wi-Fi-enabled park. He had not only boosted the town's internet, but he had also boosted his own social network. He had fixed a problem, gained some Infrastructure Integrity, and made a new friend. The grind, he was starting to realize, had its perks.