NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 3
Chapter 3
As Jake slowly opened his eyes, the room came into focus, and he found himself lying on an old, creaky floor. The musty air filled his nostrils, and he winced, trying to recall how he had ended up here. The room was filled with a thick layer of dust, and the sunlight filtered through the broken blinds, casting a ghostly glow on the shabby furniture. A sense of unease crept over him as he took in the sight of roots and plants snaking across the floor and walls as if nature itself was reclaiming the abandoned space.
He stood up and took a tentative step forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight. He reached out to touch the peeling wallpaper, the faded floral pattern barely recognizable underneath the layers of neglect. Each step stirred up clouds of dust, causing him to cough as he made his way across the room to the only window.
Peering through the cracked glass, he was met with a haunting sight. The street outside was lined with long-abandoned cars, their once vibrant colors now muted and rusted from years of neglect. Weeds and grass burst through the cracks in the asphalt, reclaiming the road as their own. Buildings stood like silent sentinels, their walls adorned with a blanket of crawling vines and wild foliage. The air outside was eerily still, punctuated only by the occasional howl of the wind or the distant call of a bird.
As Jake took in the desolate scene before him, a shiver ran down his spine. The world outside felt frozen in time as if nature had pressed pause on the once bustling city. It looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie or a video game. How had he ended up in this forgotten place? What had happened to the world?
With a furrowed brow, Jake turned away from the window, determined to unravel the enigma of his presence in this eerie, abandoned house. Sweeping the decrepit room with his gaze, he racked his brain, trying to remember what he’d been doing before ending up in this dreadful place.
For a minute, nothing came to his mind. Then the memories came rushing back at him, and he remembered everything—being dog-tired and half-asleep while driving home from work, seeing strange messages about some mysterious System planning to turn the Earth into something else, and then swerving off the road and crashing into a pine tree. And now he’d somehow ended up in this abandoned house in a desolate world. What does it all mean?
As soon as the thought formed in his mind, a text message appeared before his eyes.
Welcome, player! The Earth has successfully been integrated into the Gameverse, and you have been brought back from stasis. Since you have been put in stasis, 6 years, 10 months, 27 days, 12 hours, 37 minutes, and 44 seconds have passed.
“What the hell,” Jake muttered.
New lines of text continued to materialize before his eyes.
And now you are almost ready to begin your adventure, player! In this world, you are a survivor and your task is quite simple—to survive by any means necessary.
Jake felt a chill run down his spine. The System had turned the world into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, in which he had to survive now. Such a prospect terrified him. What was he going to do? He was just a regular guy without any surviving experience.
Seemingly oblivious to his grim musings, the System kept texting him.
This is the last system message that you will ever get. All further information you will find on a personal digital assistant—a handheld PC, which will let you access all your stats as well as some other useful information.
Try to get a PDA as soon as possible to sign up as a new user. The System will register you and keep all the information about you in its database. After that, even if you lose your PDA, the System will still keep track of your progress, and all your personal information will become available to you again as soon as you acquire another PDA.
That’s all. Good luck, survivor! Try not to die—after all, you have only one life! Have fun!
All the text disappeared after Jake read it.
“No, no, no,” Jake stuttered in panic. “You can’t leave me like that! What do I do now? At least tell me where I should go, what I should do, what to expect at all.”
He waited for a moment, but no system message appeared before his eyes.
Have fun!
“What fun?” Jake muttered angrily. “Surviving in a post-apocalyptic world is no fun, dammit.”
This whole situation was really beginning to stress him out. His heart hammered in his chest, and his breath was coming in ragged gasps. He was about to have a panic attack.
Jake leaned against the wall and sat on the dusty floor. Trying to relax, he closed his eyes and for the next several minutes, box-breathed. His heart rate slowed, and his thoughts began to clear.
You got this, he said mentally to himself. Compartmentalize. You always were good at that.
Feeling a little better, he opened his eyes and stood up. So the System had told him that he needed to find a PDA. Where could he get one?
As soon as he thought that, there was a chiming sound that came from the other side of the room. He looked in that direction but didn’t notice anything suspicious at first. There was only some dust-covered decrepit furniture there. Then the sound chimed again and was accompanied by a small flash of light a little off to his side. He looked that way and saw what looked like a small tablet or an oversized smartphone lying on a small round table.
Has to be a PDA, Jake thought with joy, glad it hadn’t taken him long to find one. He reached the round table and picked up the handheld device. Unlike the rest of the room, it wasn’t covered in dust, looking brand-new instead. The device didn’t have any physical buttons, its smooth display shimmering under the glow of the sunlight reaching into the room. At that moment, one of the corners of the device flashed a small light followed by the now familiar chiming sound. Jake tapped the touchscreen, seemingly the only means of interaction with the device, and the touchscreen lit up with a white color.
Black letters in all caps flashed on the screen—NEW USER IDENTIFIED. PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOU’RE BEING REGISTERED IN THE SYSTEM.
Jake stared at the screen for a full minute, but nothing happened. No progress bar indicator was shown on the screen, so Jake had no idea how long it would take for him to be registered.
A glimpse of movement to his right caught his attention. He looked that way in time to see someone—something—move outside the window.
Immediately alert, Jake crouched and crept back toward the window. Making sure to conceal his body so it wouldn’t be seen from the street, he cautiously craned his neck to peer around the edge of the frame. He saw a person shuffling down the street, moving like a zombie. He—it—was clad in blood-stained clothes hanging in sherds from its skeletal frame.
“What the fuck,” Jake muttered.
He remembered that little game he’d played against the System while driving back home from work in his pickup truck. He’d been told that if he won, he’d become a player, but if he lost, he’d become a monster. However, it hadn’t been a fair game. The System had a huge advantage over him. He’d been extremely lucky to win the game to become a player. If every single person on Earth had had to play the game with the same unfair rules—and Jake had no reason to believe otherwise—it meant that most of the people had lost and been turned into monsters. So considering that Earth had been transformed into a post-apocalyptic world, it was safe to assume that the creature shuffling down the street had once been a human being but now was a zombie or a similar creature.
At that moment, the device in his hand emitted a cheerful sound. It was much louder than the chiming sounds it’d been making before, and Jake winced in fear. He glanced at the screen and saw a new piece of text appear across the middle of the screen—CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE BEEN REGISTERED IN THE SYSTEM AND WILL BE ABLE TO USE THE DEVICE IN A MOMENT AFTER IT FINISHES SCANNING YOU.
Jake wasn’t interested in that for the time being, though. He looked through the window at the creature he’d noticed earlier. The zombie no longer shuffled along the road. Instead, it’d turned to face the house Jake was in. It must have heard the cheerful sound the device had just made. Their eyes met, and the creature emitted a high-pitched scream. Jake realized that having come to the window was a huge mistake on his part. He should’ve stayed out of sight somewhere deeper inside the room instead. However, there was no time to scold himself for that, because the monster suddenly burst into a run toward him.