Chris was scrolling the Upshur County Community Forum. Sometimes he almost felt as though it was a living, breathing organism, and he was its most dedicated biologist. He was observing, cataloging, and occasionally, poking it with a stick to see how it would react.
He was in the middle of a rather dull but surprisingly passionate debate about the merits of a new brand of fertilizer being sold at the Tractor Supply when a new post, frantic, clawed its way to the top of the feed.
The post was from a young woman named Chloe Meyers, a name he vaguely recognized from the #MusketGate fiasco as one of the more vocal defenders of local history. Her profile picture was a smiling selfie with a large, ridiculously fluffy orange cat. The post was written in the slightly unhinged dialect of a person at the end of their rope.
[Chloe Meyers]: "HAS ANYONE SEEN CHESTER??? My orange cat, he's a big fluffy boy with a white spot on his chest, he slipped out last night and hasn't come home. He's very adventurous but he always comes back for dinner. I've checked all his usual spots. Please, if anyone sees him, let me know. He's my whole world."
The post was immediately flooded with sympathetic comments and offers to keep an eye out. Chris felt a pang of empathy. He knew, from his previous reconnaissance, that this was a recurring drama. Chester the cat was a local legend, a notorious escape artist whose wanderings were a regular feature on the forum.
As he was reading through the comments, a notification popped into his HUD.
[Quest: Find Chester!]
[Objective: Locate and ensure the safe return of [Object_ID: Cat_Chester_43644534].]
[Reward: 150 XP, +5 Community Approval]
The System, it seemed, was also a cat lover. The quest was a simple, straightforward "find the NPC" mission. And the +5 to his [Community Approval] stat was a nice contribution to his ongoing [World Quest]. He had his mission.
He began his investigation from the command center of his bedroom. He didn't just have access to the forum's public posts; he had access to the underlying data. He activated his [Analyze Vector Data] function, the same powerful tool he had used to redraw the county's bus routes. This time, he wasn't targeting a municipal system. He was targeting a single, furry variable.
He ran a query, compiling all posts on the community forum from the last three years that contained the keywords "Chester," "lost," "orange cat," and "that fluffy monster." The System churned through the data, and a holographic map of Buckhannon materialized over his desk. On the map, a series of glowing, heat-map-like spots appeared, indicating the locations of Chester's past sightings and recoveries.
The cat was a creature of habit. His territory was a well-defined, three-block radius that bordered the city park. He was an adventurer with a very small, predictable world map. The analysis had narrowed the search area from the entire town to a single neighborhood.
He drove to the designated search area, a pleasant neighborhood of well-kept houses and leafy, mature trees. He parked the SUV and began his search on the ground. He walked the sunny streets, his eyes scanning the yards, the porches, the shadowy spaces under cars.
He activated a wide-area [INSPECT] scan, a powerful but energy-intensive ability he rarely used. He opened a filter, a mental search bar, and typed in the specific object ID he was looking for.
[FILTER ACTIVE: Cat_Chester_43644534]
He was, in essence, running a search query on reality itself. He walked for a few minutes, the System quietly scanning every object, every life form, within a hundred-yard radius. He passed a gray squirrel, which the System briefly identified and then dismissed. He passed a ceramic garden gnome, also dismissed.
Then, he got a hit.
A glowing, golden waypoint marker, the familiar arrow of a quest objective, appeared in his vision. It was pointing up. Way, way up.
He followed the marker, his eyes tracing a path up the thick, gnarled trunk of a massive, old pine tree in a resident's backyard. The waypoint was hovering over a single, incredibly high branch, at least sixty feet off the ground.
The cat was well and truly stuck.
He walked around to the front of the house and saw her. A young woman in her late twenties, with the same kind, worried face from the profile picture, was walking up and down the sidewalk, calling out a name in a frantic, high-pitched voice.
"Chester! Cheesy-boy! Here, kitty kitty!"
It was Chloe.
Chris took a deep breath. This was the social part of the quest, the part he always dreaded. But he had the solution. He was the bearer of good, if slightly complicated, news. He approached her, his footsteps soft on the grass.
"Uh, Chloe?" he said, his voice a little hesitant.
She spun around, her eyes wide and hopeful. "Yes? Have you seen him?"
He pointed up at the incredibly high branch of the pine tree. "I think he's up there."
Chloe's eyes followed his finger. She squinted, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. A miserable, high-pitched meow drifted down from the top of the tree, a cry for help from a fluffy, orange idiot who had climbed much higher than he had planned.
"Oh, Chester," she breathed, her hopeful expression crumbling into one of distress. Her shoulders slumped. "Oh, no. How in the world did he get up there? And how are we going to get him down?"
Chris, feeling a strange, new sense of calm competence, pulled out his phone. He knew exactly what to do. He wasn't a firefighter. He wasn't a professional cat rescuer. But he knew who was.
He dialed the non-emergency number for the Buckhannon Volunteer Fire Department. A gravelly voice answered on the second ring. It was Fire Chief Meyers, the man whose bake sale he had saved with a combination of cosmic intervention and magically delicious cookies.
"Chief Meyers," Chris said, his voice clear and steady. "I think we have a situation over on Elm Street. A... citizen is in distress."
The arrival of the VFD ladder truck was a small-town spectacle. The bright red engine rolled down the quiet, residential street, its lights flashing, drawing a small crowd of curious neighbors from their houses. Chief Meyers, looking every bit the heroic, mustachioed public servant, hopped out of the cab, a look of serious, professional concern on his face.
He saw Chris and a flicker of recognition crossed his face. "Well, I'll be," he said, a slow smile spreading under his mustache. "The cookie guy. What's the emergency?"
Chris pointed up at the top of the pine tree, where a small, miserable orange blob could be seen clinging to a branch. The rescue was a textbook, heartwarming cat-in-a-tree operation. A young, fit-looking firefighter climbed the long extension ladder, a thick pair of gloves on his hands. He spoke to the cat in a low, soothing voice. After a few tense moments of negotiation, he managed to scoop the ungrateful, hissing furball into his arms and carry him back down to the ground.
He handed the cat to Chloe, who burst into tears of relief. She held the fluffy, squirming Chester to her chest, burying her face in his fur.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you," she said, looking from the firefighter to Chief Meyers to Chris, her eyes shining with gratitude. She turned to Chris, a tear tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. "You're a hero. If you hadn't found him, I never would have looked up there."
"No problem," Chris said, a smile on his face. "Glad I could help."
They exchanged contact info, Chloe insisting that she owed him a lifetime supply of coffee, or at least a beer. A triumphant, two-part notification chimed in his HUD.
[Quest Completed! 150 XP Awarded!]
[+5 Community Approval]
[New Ally Gained: Chloe Meyers.]
[Ally Trait: Animal Lover. Grants +5 to all interactions involving non-hostile fauna.]
He had done it. He had saved the cat. He had gained an ally. And he had, once again, proven that he was at least a somewhat competent solver of other people's problems.
Later that night, Chris was back in his room, the warm glow of his successful rescue still lingering. He felt good. He felt competent. But as he looked at his [USER STATUS] window, the familiar, nagging anxiety returned. The daunting text of his two biggest personal quests stared back at him.
[Quest: Physical Conditioning]
[Quest: Gainful Employment]
He had helped the town. He had helped his neighbors. But he had made no progress on his own, personal grind. On his walk back to the SUV after Chester's rescue, he had found a discarded lottery scratcher ticket on the sidewalk. It was a cheap, one-dollar ticket, probably fallen from someone's pocket. He had picked it up on a whim and had shoved it in his pocket.
He pulled it out now, a flimsy, colorful piece of cardboard that represented a long-shot, one-in-a-million chance at a solution to his money problem. He used [INSPECT] on the ticket.
[Object: Lottery Ticket ("Lucky 7s")]
[Status: Unscratched]
[Probable Outcome: Losing Ticket (99.8%)]
Of course. It was a losing ticket. But... what if it wasn't?
An idea, a dangerous, audacious, and deeply tempting idea, a test of his new Class, slowly formed in his mind. He was a Reality Architect. He could modify object properties. He had changed the flavor of a cookie, the appearance of a plaque. Could he change the status of a lottery ticket?
He opened his [Reality Architect] skill menu and selected [Modify Object Property (Minor)]. The familiar interface appeared, prompting for a target and a desired outcome.
He targeted the flimsy piece of cardboard in his hand.
[Target_Object_ID: Chris_Day_Lottery_Ticket_01]
He set the desired outcome, his heart pounding in his chest.
[Modify Property: Status]
[New Value: "Winning Ticket"]
The moment he entered the new value, the System's usual, calm interface was replaced by a warning.
[WARNING: This command is a direct manipulation of a value-based probability matrix. This action will incur a significant EP cost. Proceed? [Y/N]]
He stared at the confirmation box. He was a gamer. He had been a gamer his entire life. And there was one, universal, unbreakable rule of gaming. When a game asks you if you're sure you want to do the awesome, powerful, and slightly dangerous thing... you always, always, click Yes.
He did.
The command executed. The world didn't shimmer. There was no flash of light. But he felt it. He felt a sensation like all the energy, all the warmth, all the vitality, was being pulled from his body, a metaphysical vacuum cleaner sucking him dry. He watched the [EP] bar on his HUD plummet, the blue line draining away with terrifying speed, dropping from a healthy 90% to a critical, flashing red 5%.
A single, deeply costly notification appeared.
[Object Property Modified.]
[Status: Winning Ticket ($1000 Prize)]
He sat there, his body trembling from the sudden energy expenditure, the now-verifiably winning lottery ticket clutched in his hand. He had a short-term solution to his money problem. But he also understood, with a new, chilling clarity, that sometimes rewriting reality, even on the smallest, most insignificant scale, was the most exhausting work in the universe.