A System And A Dagger
1062 Words
It came without warning. Not a sound he heard with his ears, exactly more a sound that arrived directly in his understanding, as though it had bypassed the usual channels and simply presented itself as fact. Clear and precise and close, as if it were being spoken by someone standing just behind his right ear.
Welcome, Benjamin Harlow, to the user interface System.
He stopped walking.
Initialisation sequence complete. Your status has been registered. Two unique skills have been detected and are now active.
The voice was measured and perfectly neutral, not quite human, not quite mechanical, existing in the precise space between the two. It did not feel threatening. It felt, if anything, like the first moment of a very complicated explanation.
Skill One: Online Shop. Current level: One.
Skill Two: Perfect Copy. Current level: One.
Further information on each skill is available on request. The System is standing by.
Ben stood very still in the green gold light of the ancient forest, with the sound of running water ahead of him and the vast, indifferent world all around him, and breathed.
His whole life, he had been told by teachers, by employers, by the particular silence of Sunday lunches that his one ability was worthless. That being a copy of something was the least you could be. That the world had no use for a man whose only skill was making perfect reproductions of things that already existed.
He thought of the deity in the armchair and the careful, apologetic weight of his voice.
Abilities that I think suit you rather specifically. He said.
A slow smile began to form on the face of Benjamin Harlow, copy boy, twenty two years old, recently deceased, currently standing in a forest on another world entirely and for the first time in his life, he did not try to stop it.
"Alright," he said softly, to the voice, to the forest, to whatever the System was and whatever came next.
"Let's see what level one looks like."
He stood very still for a moment, half expecting something to happen on its own — a flash of light, a menu appearing in the air, some dramatic indication that the universe was ready to show him its hand. Nothing came. The forest continued to do what forests do: breathe slowly, creak gently, maintain its comprehensive indifference to the concerns of recently deceased copy boys.
He tried speaking to the voice. It had addressed him directly, so presumably it could hear him.
“Online Shop,” he said. Then, feeling slightly self-conscious about giving instructions to the inside of his own head, he added, “Activate.”
Online Shop is not currently available, the System replied, with the serene patience of a customer service line that has never once been flustered. This skill will become accessible at Level Ten.
Ben blinked. “Level ten?” He did a quick and thoroughly dispiriting calculation. He was presumably at level one, given that the System had announced both skills as being at that level. “That’s nine whole levels away.”
Correct.
“And the skill is listed as something I have. Right now. It’s one of my two gifts.”
The skill has been acquired and registered. Availability is level-gated. Online Shop will unlock at Level Ten.
He stood with this information for a moment. It was, he decided, exactly the kind of thing that would happen to him. The universe had given him an apology and a gift, and the gift came with terms and conditions. He should have expected nothing less.
“Right,” he said. “Fine. We’ll come back to that.”
He pushed the Online Shop to one side of his mind — a mental filing cabinet already labelled things to deal with later — and turned his attention to the second skill.
“Perfect Copy,” he said. “Activate.”
The System responded immediately, but not in the way he’d hoped.
Perfect Copy requires a valid target. Please hold an item or observe an active skill before activation.
Ben frowned. “I need to be holding something?”
Correct. The skill will replicate the targeted object or ability in precise detail. A target must be established before the copy process can begin.
He looked around. The forest offered him trees, leaves, rocks, ferns, and the distant sound of water — none of which seemed especially worth replicating. Then he remembered the pack on his shoulder, and the contents he had inventoried while still in shock from the waking-up-in-a-forest experience.
He unslung the pack and crouched down, unbuckling the flap. His hand found the leather sheath almost immediately, and he drew out the small knife — or rather, he realised now, looking at it properly for the first time, not a knife exactly. A dagger. Short-bladed, double-edged, the handle wrapped in something dark that felt like cord wound tight over wood. It was a functional thing. No ornamentation, no sigils or mysterious engravings, just the clean purposeful geometry of something made to be used. It sat in his hand with a comfortable weight that he found obscurely reassuring.
He held it out in front of him, turned it slowly, and said, “Perfect Copy. Activate.”
Something happened.
It was not dramatic. There was no flash, no shimmer, no sound effect. One moment his left hand was empty at his side, and the next moment it wasn’t. He looked down and there, sitting in his palm, was a dagger. Identical to the one in his right hand in every particular: same length, same weight, same dark cord-wrapped handle, same faint gleam along the double edge. He turned them both over, held them side by side, pressed his thumbs along the flat of each blade. He could not find a single point of difference between them.
The System’s voice arrived quietly, almost as an afterthought.
Perfect Copy activated. Target successfully replicated: Iron Dagger x1.
Ben stared at the two daggers in his hands.
Then, because he was twenty-two years old and had spent three years pressing a green button in a grey room and this was genuinely the most remarkable thing that had ever happened to him, he did what any reasonable person would have done.
He threw his head back and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Woohoo!”
- Writer
