Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 37: New Reality

Despite all the excitement of the previous day, they were back the next morning, sitting in the meeting room, waiting for Bailey to lay out how badly they were going to be limited going forward.

“Basically, we’re going to be allowed to continue as usual, but we’re going to have to confirm all our kills going forward, no one wants to end up with a series of creatures getting summoned without human input.” Bailey sighed, clearly exhausted.

“Except creatures being summoned without human input could be a major problem for humanity as a whole. This is something that needs to be investigated!” Isaac insisted, being echoed by Patrick a moment later.

“I know. But what would have happened if there hadn’t been anyone nearby to get that warning?” Bailey asked “No one died, so we aren’t in deep shit, but this still scared the crap out of a lot of people. Until we figure out how to do this safely, we’re not allowed to do any experiments in this vein anymore.”

“All we’d really need is an around the clock guard, at least if the creature we use is weak enough. Assuming the time until the automatic summonings start is always the same, we could time it so a bunch of people nearby are asleep at the time, that way we could check if the warning wakes sleepers. If it does, all we’d need is someone to be nearby in any capacity, which should be doable. Certainly, I’d be willing to sleep on a futon in the breakroom or something if that’s what it takes. But this needs to be investigated. There’s no way in hell some idiot isn’t going to accidentally create a situation for this sort of thing to happen out in the world.”

“Unfortunately, I’m fully aware of that.” Bailey sighed “Just having someone here 24/7 would probably fix the problem, but we’d still have to convince a whole lot of officials of that. It’d work, but it’d also take a lot of time.”

“It doesn’t matter how long it takes, it’s beyond vital that we investigate this.” Patrick said vehemently “Monsters roaming around had the potential to be pretty bad. Reproducing monsters, on the other hand? Time to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye!”

“Like I said, I agree that this is important. Write up a list of what measures you’d be willing to personally do, for example, how often you’d be willing to stay here overnight, at least if the warning wakes up sleeping people, and I’ll do everything in my power to get it approved.” Bailey sighed, betraying the depth of his mental exhaustion. The last day could not have been kind to him.

Despite that, the suggestions kept coming, until he held up a hand to stop them, in a rather definitive way that brooked no argument.

“Look, the only thing certain right now is that we’ll be allowed to continue our research. Between the fact that no one knows what the hell actually happened, the fear of it happening again without us recognizing the warning signs and the possibility of other incidents occurring without us having discovered it under relatively safe circumstances, no one is going to dare tell us to stop. No one who’s spent more than two seconds thinking about it, at least.” Bailey said, then winked at them.

“And if anyone asks, you didn’t call in a bunch of favors so people would tell the university how useful we’ve been. Apparently, the phones were ringing off the hook for a while and the dean wasn’t too happy about being unable to get any work done. Therefore, I also can’t tell you that it was a good job …”

He trailed off suggestively.

“But about the whole research into autonomous problems, is there anything more you can tell us?” Isaac asked.

Bailey sighed deeply before replying “Look, anyone who’s actually thought things through and doesn’t have their head stuck in the sand knows we need to study that whole mess, but it also needs to be done safely. We’ll need to submit an experiment protocol for approval before we do anything in that vein.”

“… and that’ll take forever.” Patrick sighed.

“At least we only have to do that for those specific experiments.” Bailey reminded them “Imagine we had to wait for approval before we do anything? As things stand now, we can do anything that’s within our budget.”

“Right, that reminds me, what kind of a budget do we have?” Karl asked “There are some cool tricks I can pull off with my evolved [Class], but I’ll need the right materials and that can get expensive.”

“Our budget … is to be determined. We’re getting a lot of additional funding, and as a result, I don’t actually have any hard numbers, and a lot of it being invested in the new building we’re getting. But right now, we’ve got enough to replace our current setup three times over without any trouble.”

Then, he frowned at Karl “Did you say [Class] evolution? When did that happen? And what was it?”

“Oh, that happened last night. I’m now a [Magineer], which lets me create constructs and buildings with ease, as long as I have the materials and a plan.”

“That’s awesome.” Bailey grinned “Anybody else have an advanced [Class]?”

“We all do.” Amy said “The rest of us are [System Researchers], with awesome Perception based abilities and the capacity to copy magic based [Skills] we see.”

“How did you pull that off?” Bailey asked.

“We may or may not have found a place well clear of anyone who might be in danger and started summoning, with me making sure nothing went wrong.” Isaac explained.

“May or may not? Which is it?”

“Whichever is less likely to result in a scolding.” Isaac shrugged.

Bailey sighed again “I wasn’t there, so I don’t fully know how it went, but you’re all here and looking fine. If something went wrong or came close to it, please be very careful around that, and maybe don’t risk a repeat performance. Be careful.”

Amy tossed Isaac a warning glance.

“Always am.” he shrugged “I know my limits and while I might, on occasion, go right up to them, I never cross them. I know how to pick my battles.”

“As long as you think before you act, you should be fine.” Bailey nodded.

“Before we go in circles for the rest of the day, there’s something that’s been on my mind since yesterday, something I think I should share with you.” Patrick broke in, looking at each of them in turn, gaze serious.

“I think this [System] might have been created with malicious intent.”