The long wooden ramp groaned as the three friends crossed on their way down onto the loaded sea bus. It was dangerously full, with several dozen people already on board, but the driver called out and waved them on anyway with a hurried gesture. Aiden and Alison lowered Ravi onto the bench seating as a few able-bodied people shifted over, making space for the injured man. The teenager followed them on, his hand wrapped up in strips of fabric he’d torn from his shirt.
“Everyone hold on, we’re a tad overweight!” the boat pilot said. Pilot? Driver? Captain? Aiden was so exhausted from the day he couldn’t remember what you call the person who steers a boat. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned against the railing as the boat engine fired up and he felt the vessel move away from shore. Some of the tension finally lifted off his shoulder from the relative safety they had achieved.
“Guys?” Alison tapped Ravi’s shoulder, her voice laced with concern. Aiden snapped to attention, adrenaline already pounding. But the source of her outcry was not an attack. Without fanfare or aplomb, a shimmering, translucent pane was floating in the air in front of her.
“I see it too,” Ravi said quietly from his seat beside her. People around them strained to see as well, everyone speculating and murmuring quietly to each other. Ravi tried to stand, but winced from the pain and collapsed back into his seat with a sharp exhale. “What’s it say? I can’t see from here.”
“It’s just like a bunch of error messages?” She frowned, her eyes scanning over the slate, brow furrowed in thought. “Erroneously heightened power levels have been corrected,” she read out load. “Does that mean anything to you guys?” Her eyes scanned back and forth over the text.
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“Oh, here. It says I’m now level one and I need to pick a class? How? I don’t even have an implant. How am I seeing your game stuff?”
Aiden shuffled through a few people to get a closer look at the shimmering menu. “This isn’t the game interface. It’s... something else.” He reached out nervously and touched a single finger to the side of the pane. It bobbed slightly in the air, then settled back into position. “And it’s solid. Kinda cold?”
“I got it too, y’all.” Ravi leaned over the edge of the boat, his own translucent pane fixed in the air before him. “I didn’t even do nuthin’, it just appeared.”
As if by some silent command, the floodgates opened. Panes popped up in front of everyone on the boat. A guy in the back shouted out with alarm first, then a couple near the captain’s chair reeled back in surprise. Then Aiden saw one, then the teenager. Soon everyone was staring at the strange screens around them, trying to figure out what they meant.
Aiden turned away from the glowing slate with its waiting prompt, asking him to choose a class. He gazed out across the water at the city and the receding coastline. A few high-rises were now on their sides, and many of the buildings near the coast were on fire. Thick black smoke rose in lazy plumes across the downtown core. A detonation sounded from somewhere far off in the distance, and a creature easily bigger than a house jumped from the top of a towering building. Its multiple limbs rotated wildly in the air before it disappeared from view behind other buildings.
The light misting of rain they’d been under all day finally broke, and the sun peeked out from between the clouds, casting a dull light over the now ruined city. The world had changed. They couldn’t say yet how this had happened, or why, but the line between fantasy and reality was gone. Magic was real. Monsters were real. There was no off switch for this new world.
They’d won the day, but humanity’s battle for survival had only just begun. Aiden leaned against a support beam and watched the waves crash against the side of the small boat. “I guess I won’t need to renegotiate that raise.”
