Yet, dreams had their demands, too. Now, I faced the daunting task of reaching Paris within twelve hours for a crucial rendezvous with three of Earth’s other Forerunners. The thought of their reaction if I failed to appear sent a shiver of apprehension down my spine.

  In a conscious effort to temper my rising anxiety, I allowed myself a moment of relaxation. Stretching out, I could feel the newfound strength that coursed through my body—a tangible testament to my transformation. Taking a deep breath, a sigh escaped my lips, a silent acknowledgment of the simple, yet profound joy of being alive. It was a fleeting moment to appreciate existence before duty beckoned once more.

  Rolling onto my side, I reached for my cellphone on the small nightstand beside my mattress. Keeping it away from the portal’s lower level seemed prudent; so far, it hadn’t succumbed to any mysterious fates within the confines of the shed.

  As I began scrolling through flights, frustration quickly set in. No commercial airline could deliver me to Paris swiftly enough. Even the fastest route—a nine to eleven-hour flight after a two-hour drive to Chicago—was impractical.

  However, one less worry was financial. Thanks to the surprisingly generous deposit my mother had made into my bank account, alongside a similar sum for my sister Cece—disguised as spending money but amounting to much more—I could afford the journey. That deposit had shown up at the same time as the Jeep Wrangler sitting in the driveway, a modest but cherished symbol of newfound independence. It wasn’t just any car; it was the one I’d always wanted, now a reality parked just outside.

  Money wasn’t going to be the solution to my problem, though. Just to be sure, I did a quick search just to ensure there was no way that a private jet could get me there. That was also a non-starter. I might have been able to book one with the money in my account now, but even a charter couldn’t get to the small local airport and then get me to Paris in time.

  I felt my sense of victory and peace slipping away. They’d done this on purpose. They being the other Forerunners. Nuri or Anika could have flown me there. I presumed Jiang had some way to do it as well, but I didn’t have any means of contacting them. This was just too frustrating.

  Then something hit me. I hadn’t considered it before. When I spoke to Gal’Or, the Crembori, he made it clear that they had been to Earth. They seemed to know quite a bit about humans and if not for the way that Anika and Nuri had cut him off; I bet he would have said more. So maybe… just maybe.

  I stood up. It probably didn’t matter if I was lying on the mattress or up on my feet, but somehow it was the natural thing.

  “Gal’Or can you hear me? Are you monitoring me? Or any Crembori? Anyone?”

  After a couple minutes of silence, I felt like a moron. That would have been too easy. But then another thought hit me. The portals were anathema to technology. I had to keep my cell phone on the top floor just to keep it from exploding. I bet Crembori technology had even more problems with the mana.

  Once I had the idea in my head, I ran for the house. I slowed down right before I reached the door when I realized that I likely would have been little more than a blur to most humans watching me. Not supersonic or anything like that, but fast all the same. I walked into the kitchen and found mom making some eggs.

  “Mmm… eggs…” Then I sniffed. “Is that bacon, I smell?”

  She smiled at me. “Sure is, sweetie. Hungry?”

  I rubbed my stomach. “Like you wouldn’t believe. It feels like it’s been a week since I ate any of your cooking.”

  I could afford a few minutes. Who knew how many more chances I’d have like this with my mom? So, I put my plan on hold for a short while and went to sit down at the table. I caught myself just before I pulled out my chair and moved over to the sink to wash my hands. Mom was a stickler for that before eating at her table.

  She nodded her head in approval and added, “Maybe, if you weren’t always on the move…”

  I started to interrupt her, but she waved me off. “No, don’t mind your old mother. I know you’re a college man now. You put your life on hold for us long enough. You’ve got your future in front of you and I’m sure it’s super exciting. Just promise me that if you and any of the girls get—”

  “Mom...” I groaned in protest.

  She set a plate with four fried eggs and what looked like half a pound of bacon in front of me. “You know what I mean. I trust you, though. I was just a bit shocked when your sister described how some of the girls reacted to you, but I shouldn’t be. I’ve always known I have the most handsome son in the world. It’s about time that everyone else realized that, too.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I pointed to all the food and said, “Feeding an army?”

  She shrugged. “We’ve got the money now and you need to fill out. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’ve been growing. If you’re like your dad, you’re gonna end up packing on another twenty or thirty pounds of muscle and you gotta feed those muscles. That’s where I can come in. I don’t have much else to do besides make sure you and Cecilla are taken care of.”

  Breakfast turned out to be just what I needed. The food was good, but seeing my mom so up and active was refreshing to my soul. I ended up talking to her for the better part of an hour before I told her I was going to go into town. She didn’t even pry as to what I might be up to.

  Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what I was up to. There wasn’t enough time an hour ago to get to Paris. There definitely wasn’t enough time now. If this hair-brained scheme didn’t work, then I had no idea what I’d be doing.

  I did enjoy the new car smell of in the Jeep though. It was a luxury I didn’t remember ever experiencing before. Apparently, Uncle Dan had been doing better for himself than any of us knew, because he must have given my mom a huge inheritance for her to be able to just buy two new cars for her kids. At least when the apocalypse came, I would be able to say that I’d owned something beyond a junker that I didn’t know whether or not it was going to start.

  Once I got out on a country road a couple miles from home, I pulled off onto the gravel. I looked around. As far as I could see, there were rows of corn. It wasn’t harvested yet from what I’d learned, but the corn sure was tall. I guessed this was going to be as private as I could get for what I wanted to do.

  I thought about focusing on my Adorably Harmless aura. Maybe they’d be able to detect that. But I discarded that idea. Their technology wasn’t compatible with the system. Gal’Or had as much as admitted that. He did say that some of their people were working on ways to develop technology which would be consistent with the system, but that wasn’t the same thing.

  So, I was down to yelling. It was a long shot, at best. Then again, any civilization which had mastered faster than light travel and energy to matter transformation surely could monitor an entire planet. The real question was whether they thought that it was worth doing so.

  “Gal’Or? Can you hear me? Can any Crembori hear me? If you can, I need to speak to you urgently.”

  I called out every thirty seconds or so for five minutes. Just when I was about to give up on it, I felt the hair on the back of my skin stand up. In the cornfield to my right, I felt a shift in pressure. Something had just landed in the middle of the rows of corn. It wasn’t in sight, but my Perception was more than ten times greater than that of an average human, so I was pretty confident in what I was sensing.

  I looked around again, making sure there weren’t any cars passing by and then I streaked into the cornfield. A couple hundred yards into the field, I came up on an area of crushed corn. It was pretty much a perfect oval shape and about thirty feet long by twenty-five feet wide. I never would have been able to instantly estimate that with the degree of precision that I just did, so both Perception and Mind were showing their worth.

  I stood still. The way the air was flowing told me there was something in the space in front of me. I just couldn’t see it. Then just like a heat mirage, the air shimmered and I could see a very alien ship. It was smooth on the outside and supported on three legs which held the main body about three feet off the ground. The actual body of the ship was no more than eight feet high.

  Before I could consider it any further, a doorway opened and a Crembori walked out. It could easily have been one of their Forerunners, they all looked the same. To be honest, they all sorta did look the same, but once again, those enhanced stats came to my aid, and I knew this wasn’t Gal’Or.

  “Greetings, human. I don’t know how you know the name Gal’Or, but he pleaded with the counsel until we stationed a ship in orbit around Earth. He seemed convinced that one of you humans was going to reach out to us.”

  It hit me then. Only the Crembori Forerunners would know about the coming apocalypse or other Forerunners. So Gal’Or must have come up with another excuse to get a ship stationed here. It was reassuring that he apparently had a fair bit of authority. Although I was curious if Gal’Or had found a workaround for the restrictions the system placed upon us Forerunners, no doubt the Crembori would be asking questions.

  Now, I just needed to figure out how much a ride was gonna cost me.

  Chapter 2- The Price of Hitchhiking

  “So how’s this work? Did Gal’Or give instructions to help us?”

  He stared at me for a moment, his oversized eyes unblinking. “As in help those of Earth? No… no… non-intervention is the Crembori way. We may investigate, but we don’t intervene.”

  There was more that he wasn’t saying. I couldn’t pick up on exactly what it was and his non-verbal communication was so different from what I was accustomed to that Perception wasn’t going to help me. Yet, I was confident that he was holding back. Maybe it was a side-effect of my Charisma. I guess that sorta made sense. It wouldn’t be very useful for influencing if it couldn’t read social cues.

  The longer he stood there in silence the more certain I became. This was important so, I activated my passive ability, Adorably Harmless. With ninety Charisma fueling it now, the ability was stronger than ever and unless I was completely wrong, this particular Crembori was not a Forerunner. As I’d already experienced, the un-inducted had very little defense against system based abilities.

  He shuddered. “You seem harmless enough. As statistically improbable as this is, our newest orders arrived just before you called, directing us to provide any assistance needed by a human: Silas Renner. Our scan of your vehicle indicates that it is registered to a Silas Renner. Is that you?”

  I smiled. Gal’Or must have put those orders in the instant that he returned from the race. “That’s me. All I really need now is a ride to Paris, France. It is vitally important that I be there before 6 pm.”

  “As part of my anthropological studies I am familiar with all of the major cities on your world. But, I do have a few questions of my own.”

  “Uh, okay… I guess we have a bit of time. You aren’t going to probe me or anything are you?” I meant it as a joke, but then sorta sobered up as I realized they might very well have done that to humans as part of their studies. I needed to remember that the beings I was dealing with were not human and might not have the same moral ideals that I assumed most humans at least tacitly agreed to.

  “How is it that you speak Crembori?”

  I smiled. I couldn’t explain auto-translate even if I wanted to. I was certain that talking about any aspect of the system would get me in trouble and they wouldn’t learn anything, anyway. “You know how there are parts of your science that are probably so far beyond me that you couldn’t explain them to me. At least not without years of remedial education for me? Well, this is pretty much the same. I’ll trust you that your ship can fly even though I don’t understand the propulsion technology. And you’re just going to have to accept that I can communicate with you.”

  “Most unusual, but I take your meaning. My second question is what is the strange energy that you’re giving off? Our instruments have detected it at various spots around the Earth, but only for the past 1,440 of your days. It interferes with our instruments and can even cause some of our technology to short out.”

  “That’s another part of what I wouldn’t be able to explain to you, but I am willing to submit to any non-invasive tests you want to administer. You can see what I’m capable of. I just need to be in Paris within the next 10 ½ hours.”

  “What you are capable of…” He repeated my words back to me but left them hanging there like he was trying to get more information.

  I didn’t want to just stand around though, so I said, “You’ve probably measured the physical capabilities of humans, right?”

  He made a clicking sound, which I took to be an affirmative. “And can your sensors track me if I demonstrate my ability to run?”

  “Ah, I see, you are making a good faith offering to show that you are as harmless as you seem. Run then, human. We will track you.”

  “It’s Silas. No one wants to be called human. How’d you like it if I called you Crembori?”

  It was a second before he replied. “It would be factually accurate. I’m not sure why my preference would matter. Although, I suppose it would be imprecise. Very well, you may call me Dan’Or.”

  “Are you related to “Gal’Or?” I asked with genuine curiosity.

  “Not in the way that you are thinking, but he comes from an early batch based upon the ‘Or genetic profile. We make very good explorers and leaders at the sacrifice of some of our more academic potential.”

  That comment was so laden with content that I didn’t even want to touch it at the moment. I put learning about the Crembori as a future Silas problem and instead asked, “Then are you ready to monitor me?”

  He touched a small red dot on the back of his hand. It appeared to be some sort of insert. Then he answered, “Affirmative.”

  That was all the go ahead that I needed. I put on a bit of a display, running at top speed, leaping into the air and doing flips. I definitely would have gotten ‘oohs and aahs’ from any human audience followed by a round of applause and a request for an encore, but Dan’Or barely seemed to look at me. Well, that was until I used my active ability, Mage Missiles. The stalks of corn that I targeted had done nothing, but the ability still blasted a small area of the corn and created a small rain of dirt and rock as the ground settled again.

  I felt an immediate humming from the ship and Dan’Or was backing up as he asked, “How did you do that? No human technology is capable of energy projectiles like that.”

  “Like I said, it’s part of what makes me different and the reason that Gal’Or wants you to help me. So you just have to ask yourself, are you curious enough to help me, Dan’Or?”

  Rather than respond to me he held his palm up. He seemed to be reading a holographic screen, but I was too far away to make anything out. Then he looked up at me. The fastest human speed ever recorded was 27.33 mph and then only for a very short distance. You reached speeds of greater than 100 mph along with vertical leaps which exceed any predicted human capability by a significant margin.”

  “And?”

  “Yes, we have a deal. If you will allow us to study you—in a non-invasive way, then I will gladly provide you with transportation to Paris and other assistance as may be necessary. To begin with, we will want to measure your capabilities and if possible learn ways to adapt them with our technology. Would you be interested in learning such things?”

  Before I could even answer a notification popped up.

  Available Occupation: Junkman Artificer

  An artificer is an occupation which specializes in the creation, maintenance, and repair of magical constructs. They are different from an enchanter who binds magical effects to an object or an alchemist who creates potions which bring out magical effects in the imbiber. An artificer’s creations are sometimes consumables and sometimes intended to be permanent. They are often very complex and combine system application of mana along with physical construction. Related skills such as blacksmithing and leather working will need to be developed as part of this occupation.

  Junkman variant of artificer specializes in making their creations from a hodge podge collection of technologies which exist both pre and post system. They trade versatility and improvisation for stability and predictability.

  Requirement: at least 1 mage type class shard

  I didn’t immediately accept it after reading it once. More consideration was due, but if I could learn to take bits of Earth or even Crembori technology and make them work within the system. Perhaps I could create my own grenades, lock picks, or traps. No, there was more utility, such as disguises… or, maybe even golems. I was definitely having clockwork dreams and because it would use mana from the system; I was pretty sure that the laws of physics could be bent if not outright broken.

  “Very well then, are you ready to depart immediately?”

  His words broke me out of my internal thoughts. “Uh, I have to take my car somewhere. Maybe I’ll just park it at the university. How far away will you need me to be so that no one will see you pick me up?”

  He made an expression that I could only assume was a grin. “If we don’t want you Earthers to know that we’re there, you won’t know. We will follow you and then pick you up.”

  I shrugged and let the insult go. He was probably right. I ran back out to my jeep and then quickly drove into town. Once, I found a spot in student parking where I wouldn’t be towed right away, I parked, locked the doors and then stepped out. There were other students in the lot, but a moment later, I felt myself being sucked up into the air and then into the ship.

  The space inside was tight. I felt crammed into a seat and the entire ship was humming. Dan’Or and two other Crembori made up the crew. Judging from the way they were frantically moving their hands over what I took to be control panels, something had gone wrong. Add to that the number of flashing red lights, which were apparently a universal sign for malfunction, and I was beginning to wonder if I had bigger problems than trying to get to Paris.