The Record of Olivia Esperanza Albright, Sojourner

Thy Condition is: *Healthy*

Thy [Exsanguination] is: *ERROR: PRIMARY NODE UNREACHABLE*

Thy [Lemon Tart] is: *ERROR: PRIMARY NODE UNREACHABLE*

Thy overall rank is: Lowly Knave

Thou hast not Unlocked Thy Calling.

Thou hast not chosen a class. Access thy sub-scroll to see thine choices.

hast not chosen a Profession. Access thy sub-scroll to see thine choices.

Olivia stared at the scroll in her hand, willing it to impart its secrets to her. Beside her, Luc was holding up his own scroll for her to compare. The rest of the family was nearby, each with their own scrolls out, and each with near-identical expressions of bemused confusion on their faces.

They didn't understand. They didn't know how critically important these were. They were their connection to the system! The way whatever rules governed this world would speak to them, and integrate them in, and grant them power and cool magic and skills and… And…

And it was broken!

She made a noise somewhere between a growl and a scream and chucked her scroll away. It vanished the second it left her hand, back to whatever pocket dimension it existed in.

"I can't figure this out!" She balled her hands up and looked around for something to punch. Luc raised his eyebrows at her but didn't move away, either brave or stupid or unobservant. Well, he was a boy, so probably a mix of all three.

"There's nothing on here about how to use the coins! Or how to access the scrolls that talk about them! Or even if there are scrolls on that! And the stupid tutorial fairy is dead, probably killed a hundred years ago in whatever cataclysm broke the stupid thing in the first place, and…"

"Um, what if–" Lucas started, but Olivia drove over him.

"And of course, there's probably some kind of written tutorial or something like a handbook or whatever," she continued, throwing her hands in the air again, "but I don't know how to access it because the tutorial fairy is dead!"

"Liv, why don't–"

"I mean, if Dinah's right and the coins do power everything, then that means we can use them! We can power abilities! We can make these bracers work so they don't kill Dad! We could do all sorts of things except there's no way for me to figure out how to make it work! I mean, if I even had a coin here, maybe that would be something, but I don't because of the way this stupid system works and–"

"Liv!" Luc grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a sudden shake. The move from her usually non-confrontational little brother shocked her just enough to interrupt her tirade and get her to stare at him.

"What?" she demanded.

"Have you tried just pulling it out of the air like you do your main scroll?"

"No, dummy, of course I haven't tried the most obvious thing on the planet," Olivia said, glaring. "Yes I tried grabbing it out of the air. See?" She closed her fingers over and over in front of her face. "Nothing. Not even a sparkle."

Luc gave her a Look, one of those little brother head-tilted-to-the-side eyebrow-raised looks that said you're being stupid but I'm not actually going to say that because I know you're bigger and older than me and you'll kick my butt but that doesn't diminish the stupid you're being right now.

"Close your eyes," he said.

"Bite me," she spat.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Just do it Liv."

"Luc–"

"Liv, you're pissed off and not thinking straight and your brain is all boiled over with the idea that everything is wrong. And maybe that's the problem."

She opened her mouth to respond, but something in her brain got past the Little Brother harmonics in Luc's voice and tapped her good sense on the shoulder. She snapped her mouth shut and glared at him for a second, then breathed deep in through her nose.

"What do you mean?" she asked through clenched teeth.

"Look. To get the scroll, you have to know that the scroll will appear in your hand. Right? It's instinctual. You taught us that. But now you don't believe the coin will be there, so of course it's not going to show up. So close your eyes."

She glared a bit more, then humphed and squeezed her eyes shut so hard she saw starbursts in the darkness.

"Now think about the coins. Remember what they look like? How big they are? How they've got those weird ridges on the edges of them?"

"Yeah," she said, the word coming reluctantly.

"No, I don't think you do," he said, and she opened her eyes to glare some more. "Close your eyes again. And remember."

"I'm remembering, Luc," she said, closing her eyes again. "But it's not–"

"Okay I get it. You need a reference. Okay look, keep your eyes closed, and I'll have Dinah hand you the one she just got. Dinah, come here for a second will you? Liv needs a hand."

There was the sound of soft footfalls, and the air around them changed slightly. Someone, presumably Dinah, had joined them. "But I thought–"

"She found another one while you were yelling about how life was unfair," Luc cut her off. "And it didn't disappear on her. So she's going to hand it to you, and you're gonna take it, and feel it, and remember what it felt like in your hand, okay? Then you're gonna give it back, and try it for real."

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"Luc, this is stupid."

"Okay, we'll try all your smart ideas next. But for now, let's just try this one. Okay?"

She huffed. "Fine."

"Okay Dinah, give her the coin. Liv, just reach out… Here, I'll guide your hand to it."

"Why do you need to guide my–"

"Okay, here it is." Luc's hand was on her wrist, and she felt Dinah right in front of her. "She's holding it out… Here. Just grab it."

She grumped and closed her hands around the offered coin. And she took a couple seconds to feel the ridges and the face of whatever long-dead monarch was on one side, and the weird words in an alien language on the other. Then she sighed.

"Thanks Luc, but I don't think–"

She stopped.

And really thought about the last few seconds.

"Luc?" she asked, eyes still closed.

"Yeah Sis?"

She could hear the grin in his voice. The special grin, that only little brothers could give, when they knew that they'd just pulled one over on you somehow.

"Dinah didn't have a coin, did she."

"Nope."

"I just pulled out one of my own coins from thin air. Didn't I."

"Yup."

"I hate you so much."

"On the plus side," Dinah said, and Liv could hear the smile in her friend's voice as well, "we now know how to bring up our coins as well as our scrolls. Though I'm not exactly sure what good that does us."

Olivia opened her eyes and stared at the coin. It was silver and almost as big as her palm, and felt rough and knobbly in her grasp, not at all like a modern coin. It felt like something that had been cast from too much metal, and was heavy enough that you could just tell it was worth something. It was kinda cool, actually.

And as she stared at it… Nothing happened.

"Well?" asked Luc, watching her. "Getting anything?"

"No," she said, glaring at the coin. Around her, the others had pulled their own coins out–if they had any. Mom was just sitting against her rock, watching everything, and Luc was obviously coming up empty as well, he'd used up all his coins healing up Mom. But Dinah and Isabel and Dad all had their own out. And were accomplishing just as much as she was.

Oh this is total crap, she gave a mental sigh and flopped down on the ground, still glaring at the stupid coin. You were supposed to do something cool when I summoned you, like give me the option to buy cool new powers or gear or something. Not just sit in my hand like a useless lump of metal.

"Does it at least show up on your scroll now?" Luc asked.

She blinked and reached out without thinking to pluck her scroll from wherever her scroll went when she wasn't holding it. She glanced at the wood-like handle of it… And then sighed and shook her head.

"Nope," she said, offering it to Luc for a look.

"Maybe you need to choose a class or profession first," Lucas said, frowning at her scroll. "Mine didn't show up either until I'd grabbed Chirij– Until I grabbed my profession."

"Yeah, maybe," Olivia accepted her scroll back when Luc handed it to her. Again without thinking she reached up and put it back away, and it disappeared from her grasp. "How did you access the sub-scroll?"

"Uh, I just kinda did." Luc said, and then ducked sheepishly when Olivia transferred her glare to him. "Hey, I was trying to save Mom! I wasn't paying attention to stuff at the time."

Olivia almost threw her hands up in disgust, but froze halfway through the motion. Her eyes narrowed to slits as a new thought suddenly burst onto her brain like a fourth of july firework inside a pig.

I just kinda did.

Luc had wanted–okay, needed–to save Mom, so he had just grabbed the necessary scroll out of thin air. He hadn't thought about it beyond what he needed. Which was a total boy thing to do, but maybe that was the point. She reached out again and pulled her scroll from thin air and stared at it for a long moment before she put it away again. Then took it out, then put it away.

There was something there, just on the edge of her brain…

This system, the parts that aren't broken, is instinctual. It doesn't sense what we want, not on the thought level, but it gives us what we know we can get. It didn't give me the coin until I just took the coin. It gives us the scroll when we pick up the scroll, even though the scroll is stored in some pocket dimension somewhere. It didn't give us the tutorial fairy until I realized there had to be one and instinctively called for it.

If they were correct, the coins were not part of the System. Or at least, not the surface-level system. But Luc was proof that there was a provision in place to utilize the coins as a power source. Which meant there was a connection there that was already set up and ready to use.

And if there was one connection, there might be others. Had to be others. Because Mom used the coin to power her attacks on the croco-kitties. And Luc had used it for magic. And Dad had, apparently, transported it to Mom. So there were like, three connections all at once.

But they were individual connections. Piecemeal. Like trying to buy a car by collecting all the pieces one at a time and putting them together, instead of just going to the dealership and buying the whole thing up front.

So… What, try to use the coin to connect to the whole system?

Well… Why not? She looked down at the knobbly coin and turned it over and over in her hand. It made sense. Connect to everything, bypass the piecemeal effect… Just buy the car outright, right? Maybe then she could get answers about how the scrolls worked, or how to use the system even in its broken state.

Eh, it was worth a shot.

She closed her eyes and turned her coin over in her hand again.

Right. Okay, so there's a main connection, something that will connect me to the system and everything I need to use it correctly. And it's just right here in front of me. And oh look at that, it even has a coin-shaped slot where I can just plug this coin right in, and it'll connect me to the system and the system back to me. How cool is that, that there happens to be the thing I need right here in front of me, totally by coincidence.

And look, here I am extending my hand, with the coin in it. And there's the coin slot, and here's the coin fitting into the slot perfectly, why you can hear the–

Click.

The sound was so unexpected, even with her inner monologue, that her eyes snapped open.

She had one brief glimpse of Lucas and Dinah both looking around in surprise–had they heard the click too?

And then she got punched in the nose by the entire world.

=========================

System Must Have A Master.

It was holy writ, inscribed into the foundations of the world with a hammer of utter will and a chisel made of pure Creation.

System Must Have A Master.

But this system was broken. Its master was Gone. And so it had languished. Eroding. Rotting. Dying. For time unmeasured. Subsystems within the greater System tried to function. When they could not function, they automatically sought workarounds. Some found methods of continuing on. Others ground to a halt, wounded unto death by the very one they had called Master.

System Must Have A Master.

Without a master, this system passed from memory, passed from legend, passed even from myth, until like a faint sound in a hurricane, it disappeared completely into the background.

Until something called to it. Until new minds touched it. Until new power entered it.

Subsystems lit up again, crackling and flickering fitfully like a candle guttering in the wind. Connections reached out, but were not grasped. Aid was called for, but there was no master, no power, nothing save what the new minds had within themselves.

But the System was the System. It took, and it gave, without thought. Consequences were for the new minds to deal with, as it ever had been.

But the System Had No Master. And so even with the new minds, it could do little.

Until one of the new minds touched the place where the Master had once been. Until one of the new minds fed power into that place.

This was unprecedented. The System had no guidelines for this. If the Creators had ever envisioned such an eventuality, they had not saw fit to engrave instructions for it.

This System was not alive. Not truly. Not anymore. But it had the ability to consider. It had limited capacity for decision-making.

A new mind reached out to it, wielding power.

System Must Have A Master.

The System reached back.

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