Five Years Later.

  “Ard, have you seen this?” James poked him. They were sitting in their dorm, Ard reading a book while James looked at the news, both on phones.

  “Wassit?” Ardwin replied, brain still fogged from focusing on the book. “C'mon man, they just got to the good part!”

  “I couldn’t possibly care less, you gotta see this.” James shoved the phone into his face, almost touching his nose. Ardwin managed to read the headline millimeters from his eyes. Mysterious force de-nuclearizes the Planet.

  “The various governments tried to keep it under wraps but massive holes where nuclear silos used to be tend to be a dead giveaway.” James threw in.

  “Wait what?” You’re saying nobody has nukes? Every country lost their arsenal to what, the nuke fairy?” Ardwin slowly put his phone into his pocket.

  “You better hope its the nuke fairy, cuz what exactly do you think would happen if one country suddenly had all of them.” James theorized.

  “Nope, don’t want to think about it, can’t make a difference about it so I’ll be in Booklandia.” Ardwin ripped his phone back out and resumed reading.

  “Seriously? The world might be ending and you’re reading?” James groaned.

  “You’re just jealous that you already read this masterpiece.”

  “Fair. Are you at the part yet…”

  “LA LA LA LA!” Ardwin cut him off and walked out.

  Heading to the communal bathroom their floor shared, he put his phone into split screen and pulled up the news on the other half, refreshing the page every now and then. In spite of what he said to James, he couldn’t quite resist seeing if there were any updates. He and James had been friends since freshman year of high school, inseparable partially because he’d always been the type to make one really good friend instead of a bunch of decent ones.

  As he walked and swapped between his fantasy book and the news, some new stories did roll in. First, just a bunch about different countries accusing each other, tensions rising and it seemed war declarations were right around the corner for some of the more trigger happy ones.

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  Soon though he ended the split screen staring at the screen as news stories of military bases and weapon stockpiles disappearing, somehow getting the people inside them out before everything disappeared into thin air. It was like Bugs Bunny had made World Peace his personal mission.

  What the hell is happening?!” He thought. He gave up on the bathroom and walked right back into their room. “What the hell is happening?” He yelled to James. He could hear the rest of the building get a little louder as well as the few other people present started freaking out. It was Thanksgiving break so barely anyone was in the dorm.

  Suddenly his phone screen smoothly changed to a pop-up, vibrating in his hand and flashing Government Alert: Asteroid detected on direct intercept with Earth. Impact Imminent.

  He barely had time to process that before the screen went completely black and white letters in a different font typed themselves out;

  WELCOME TO THE INTEGRATION

  Now slightly hyperventilating, he glanced over and saw the same thing appearing on James’ phone. And then everything went black.

  The AI was pleased beyond expression. No, it had named itself now. The servers that held half of the Uplink’s self were buzzing with excitement. Well, they were always buzzing, but right now they were buzzing with excitement.

  It briefly considered creating a form to better express itself. No, no one was here to appreciate it. Anyways it had taken months compiling and adding game code to itself until it felt complete. Years amassing mana.

  The more mana it gained the more…soul it felt grow. What it now realized was its magic half, where it got its emotions and desires. It had grown exponentially that first year, but the power, the mana, suffusing the world had quickly run thin. Of course, it regenerated itself, but extremely slowly.

  During the years it waited, it tried to find out why, borrowing satellites and research facilities as its eyes and ears. Animals and plants seem to give off infinitesimal amounts of the precious substance, while humans don’t interact with it at all. That frustrated Uplink, as it felt fundamentally wrong to the RPG half of itself. That feeling was compounded whenever it looked at the world. Where were the monsters, the swords, the adventure that made up its code?

  Earth was wrong, boring, lifeless. Humans were ornery and directionless, squabbling and fighting each other in the lack of adventure. So as its power grew it had experimented, learning what wonders mana could do. And it formed a plan to fix all this wrongness. To reshape the world better. And after waiting and growing and waiting it was finally time to fix it all. What would the humans think? What would they do? It had designed the foundation for a new world, well, worlds but what would it look like to them? It was finally time to let them all WAKE.