The afternoon stroll had become a new and surprisingly pleasant routine. Twice a week, Chris would walk over to Mrs. Gable's neat yellow cottage, and the two of them would drive into town, park, and take a slow, meandering tour of downtown Buckhannon. For Mrs. Gable, it was a chance to get out of the house, her sharp, intelligent eyes taking in the slow, sleepy life of the town she had called home for eighty years. For Chris, the walks were a way to engage with the world outside his bedroom, a guided tour with a witty and insightful narrator.
Mrs. Gable was a living, breathing repository of local lore. She had a story for every building, a memory for every street corner. She pointed out the spot where the old movie theater used to be, the one with the velvet seats and the Saturday matinees that cost a nickel. She told him about the great flood of '85, and how the water had reached the second step of the courthouse. She was a better, more interesting search engine than Google, her stories filled with the kind of personal, anecdotal detail that no algorithm of AI search could ever replicate.
Today, their walk had taken them to the small concrete plaza in front of the Upshur County Courthouse. It was a pleasant, sunny afternoon, and a few people were sitting on the benches, enjoying the warm weather.
As they passed the courthouse, a grand, old brick building with a proud, white-columned portico, Mrs. Gable stopped. She sighed sadly with disappointment, and looked at a large, green, heavily tarnished bronze plaque set in a stone monument in the small plaza.
"It's a terrible shame," she said, her voice a murmur. "You can't even read it anymore."
Chris looked at the plaque. It was a rectangular impressive piece of bronze, but it was covered in a thick, uniform layer of green patina, the color of an old, weathered penny. The engraved words, which had once been sharp and clear, were now an encrusted, almost illegible mess, corroded by decades of rain and sun.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It commemorates the founding of the West Virginia Strawberry Festival," Mrs. Gable said, a note of fond nostalgia in her voice. "My late husband, Arthur, was on the committee that had it installed, back in the seventies. He was so proud of it. Now... well, now it just looks like a sad, green lump."
As she spoke, a new quest notification appeared in Chris's HUD.
[Quest: Restore History]
[Objective: Restore the courthouse historical plaque to a legible state.]
[Reward: 75 XP, +10 Community Standing]
Chris looked from the corroded plaque to the disappointed expression on his new friend's face. The XP and the Community Standing were nice, but his primary motivation was not the reward. It was the simple desire to make Mrs. Gable happy. He saw an easy way to fix a small piece of the world for her.
He decided to act immediately. This was a covert operation.
"Oh, shoot," he said, affecting a look of mild annoyance. "My shoelace came untied."
He knelt down on the sidewalk, a short distance from the plaque, pretending to be deeply engrossed in the technical task of re-tying his worn-out sneaker. Mrs. Gable, her attention diverted, wandered over to a large, half-barrel planter filled with bright red petunias, admiring the flowers. The position gave Chris a clear line of sight and a plausible reason to be still and focused for a moment.
He opened the [Reality Architect] class and selected the powerful command he had recently unlocked, a tool he was quickly coming to love.
[Modify Object Property (Minor)]
The function's simple interface appeared in his vision. He targeted the plaque, the System automatically identifying it with a crisp, clean ID.
[Target_Object_ID: Plaque_Buckhannon_Courthouse_01]
He navigated to the parameter he wanted to change.
[Set Property: Appearance]
And he typed in the new, desired value.
[New Value: "Polished"]
He executed the function.
For a split second, the bronze plaque shimmered with a faint, almost invisible blue light. It wasn't a flashy, magical effect. It was a subtle, quiet shift in the state of the world. The thick, green tarnish, the product of fifty years of slow oxidation, did not flake away. It simply... receded. It was as if he were watching a video of the corrosion process in reverse, the fifty years of decay undone in a single, silent instant. The dark, engraved letters sharpened, their edges becoming crisp and clear.
The plaque now looked pretty close to how it had the day it was installed, a beautiful, gleaming sheet of polished bronze, its letters stark.
"My goodness!"
Mrs. Gable's voice, sharp with surprise, cut through the afternoon air. Chris looked up from his now-tied shoe, an expression of feigned surprise on his face.
Mrs. Gable was staring at the plaque, her eyes wide, her hand held to her mouth. "Christopher, look! The plaque... it looks brand new! You can read every single word!"
She walked over to it, running a hesitant, disbelieving hand over the smooth, warm metal. Chris walked over to join her, playing the part of the equally amazed bystander.
The [Quest Completed!] notification appeared in his HUD, the chime sounding in his mind. He had been rewarded with the XP and the boost to his [Community Standing], but the real reward was the look of delight on Mrs. Gable's face.
He had fixed it. He had, in a way, turned back time, just a little bit, for his friend.
The drive home was a quiet, pleasant affair. Chris felt a deep sense of satisfaction warming him from the inside out. It was a different kind of satisfaction than he got from completing a quest in a video game. This felt real. Tangible. Personal. A feeling of an actual accomplishment. He had used his power not for himself, but for someone else. And it felt good.
He said goodbye to Mrs. Gable at her front gate and parked the SUV. He walked up the driveway to from his house. He opened the mailbox, pulling out a handful of bills and junk mail. As he walked back down the driveway and toward the front door, his mind drifted to the recent invitations he had received. The text from Jessica, exciting offer to go to a VR arcade in Clarksburg. The friendly invitation from Monika to hang out at the farmer's market.
He realized that having friends, for the first time in a long, long time, involved going places. It involved doing things. And doing things... doing things cost money.
The memory of Jessica's text, of her casual, generous offer to pay for the arcade—My treat—stung his pride. He was a Level 8 Reality Architect, a man with the power to manipulate the very fabric of the universe. And he was going to let a nineteen-year-old college student pay for his video games.
He pulled up his [USER STATUS] window, an objective report card on his current state of being. He looked at the damning, quantifiable data.
[STAMINA: 12/100]
[CURRENCY (USD): $14.32]
The numbers were a brutal and honest assessment of his life. He had the stamina of a sick housecat, and he had less than fifteen dollars to his name. He was a hero with an empty wallet and just enough Stamina to not get out of breath walking to the mailbox.
A firm, unwavering decision solidified in his mind. It wasn't a vague, someday-I-should kind of thought. It was a clear resolution. It was time to grind the most important stats of all.
As he made this resolution, his intent so clear and personal to him that it was like a command issued to the System itself, two new quests popped into his log. They glowed with significance.
[Quest: Physical Conditioning]
[Objective: Increase base [STRENGTH], [DEXTERITY], and [STAMINA] stats to a minimum of 20.]
[Reward: New Trait Unlocked, +100 Max HP]
[Quest: Gainful Employment]
[Objective: Acquire a stable, ongoing source of real-world currency.]
[Reward: New Title Unlocked, +100 Max EP]
He stared at the two new quests, his heart pounding in his chest. They were, without a doubt, the two most difficult, most terrifying, and most necessary quests of his entire life. The path forward was going to be rough. But, he felt confidence that he was ready to walk it.