I woke up to the sound of a bottle rolling across the living room floor. In the Carter apartment, that counted as a perfectly acceptable alarm clock. The walls were so thin that every noise felt like it was happening inside my own room, and the smell of cheap beer had already slipped under the door before I even opened my eyes.
I stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. The paint was peeling in small flakes, and there was a new crack near the lamp. It had probably been there for weeks, but in this house you learn to ignore a lot of things if you don't want to lose your mind.
Then I remembered what day it was.
My birthday.
Sixteen.
Not a particularly exciting number in the South Side. Around here, birthdays didn't mean parties or expensive gifts. Most of the time it just meant you were now old enough to get into slightly bigger trouble without anyone being surprised.
I sat up in bed and reached toward the nightstand to grab my glasses. My fingers touched empty wood. I frowned and blinked several times while looking around the room.
I could see perfectly.
That didn't make any sense.
In my previous life my nearsightedness had been terrible. Without glasses I could barely distinguish shapes. But now I could see every detail in the room: the folded corner of an old poster, the pile of clothes on the chair, even the dust on the window frame.
Previous life.
The words appeared in my mind as if someone had spoken them out loud. Suddenly a strange pressure passed through my head and the images started coming.
Another room.
Another country.
A laptop lighting up a dark bedroom.
A twenty-two-year-old guy sitting in front of the screen.
Me.
But not this version of me.
The memories kept arriving, one after another. Memories of Spain, of studying, of spending nights watching shows while trying to ignore a life that had been fairly normal and fairly boring. Among those shows, there was one I remembered very clearly.
A series about a chaotic family living in the South Side.
Shameless.
I pressed a hand against my forehead as the two lives collided inside my head. It felt like someone had opened a door and let every memory rush in at once. For a moment I thought I might throw up.
Then everything stopped.
I breathed slowly while my mind tried to organize the avalanche of memories. I knew who I was now, and I knew who I had been before. It was an absurd conclusion, but there didn't seem to be any other explanation.
And then the text appeared.
It didn't come from my phone or the television in the living room. It simply appeared in front of my eyes, floating in the air like an invisible screen.
Memory restoration complete. Host confirmed.
I blinked several times.
The message didn't disappear.
System initialization complete.
"Okay…" I muttered. "That's new."
The screen changed.
Starter Package unlocked.
Several lines appeared beneath it.
Skills obtained:
Social Observation — Level 1
Convincing Lying — Level 1
Verbal Improvisation — Level 0
Urban Stealth — Level 0
I sat on the edge of the bed for several seconds, trying to decide whether the universe was playing some kind of joke on me or if I actually had a system installed in my brain.
Before I could think about it too much, another message appeared.
System tip: negative emotions generated by the host can be converted into useful resources.
"Great," I muttered. "So basically you're telling me to annoy people."
The screen didn't respond, which was probably a sign that I was right.
At that moment I heard my father's voice from the living room.
"Who the hell drank my last beer?!"
I sighed and got up from the bed. At least some things in the universe were still normal. I walked down the hallway while trying to ignore the floating screen in front of my eyes.
The Carter living room looked exactly like it always did: empty bottles on the table, the television turned on with no sound, and my father sunk into the couch with another beer already open.
"Oh," he said when he saw me. "Happy birthday."
"Thanks."
I grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it while staring at the silent television screen.
"Sixteen years old," he continued. "When I was your age I was already working."
"I'm sure the world remembers it with pride."
He didn't answer. Probably because he had already stopped listening halfway through the sentence.
I left the living room before he could start another speech about how the world had become too soft. When I reached the kitchen, I heard a door open behind me.
Megan walked out of the hallway with messy hair and a long T-shirt that clearly wasn't hers. She walked straight to the fridge and opened it like the kitchen belonged entirely to her.
"You're awake already?" she asked.
"The bottle orchestra in the living room is pretty effective."
Megan grabbed a can of beer and opened it with a sharp click.
"Happy birthday, by the way."
"Thanks."
We stayed quiet for a moment while I took a drag from the cigarette. Megan had always been like this: relaxed, direct, and completely indifferent to most social rules.
"You look weird," she said finally.
"I'm thinking."
"That's never a good sign."
I sighed.
"Let's just say I remembered things this morning that shouldn't exist."
Megan raised an eyebrow.
"One of your weird theories again?"
"Something like that."
There was no point trying to explain the system to her yet. I had enough problems convincing myself I wasn't losing my mind.
Right then another line appeared in front of my eyes.
Current host status:
Profession: Student
I almost choked on the cigarette smoke.
"You okay?" Megan asked.
"Perfectly."
The screen shifted again.
Current PEN: 0
"PEN?" I muttered.
Megan set her beer on the table and looked at me with a small amused smile.
"You know when you talk to yourself you start sounding like dad, right?"
"Relax," I replied. "I haven't started arguing with the TV yet."
At that moment someone knocked on the apartment door. Megan sighed and walked toward the living room.
"That must be for me."
I opened the fridge and grabbed a beer while listening to the conversation at the door. A male voice murmured something I couldn't understand. Megan answered with a short laugh.
The screen appeared again in front of my eyes.
System tip: social chaos is an efficient source of negative emotions.
I looked down the hallway where Megan was talking to her visitor.
Then I looked at the apartment, the neighborhood, and the street visible through the kitchen window. The South Side was full of arguments, public embarrassment, fights, and small daily disasters.
If the system was right, I was living in the perfect place to use it.
I took another sip of beer as Megan closed the door and walked back toward the living room with her guest.
Maybe turning sixteen wasn't going to be as boring as I thought.