Eli checked his email, but didn't have any responses for the jobs he applied for. It had been six months since he had gotten laid off from his job of setting up networking for businesses in his small town of Herington, TX. After four years of steady work, almost all of his clients had slowly terminated their contracts after not seeing how the work he was doing benefit them after upgrading from their decade old equipment. So his company decided that having an employee travel from Dallas to service the handful of clients that remained would be more cost effective than having someone based in Herington full time.

  His emergency fund was on his last legs, but it was really his power bill that was killing him. Over the past few years he had bought most of the equipment he had decommissioned at work to build a small data center in the guest room of his small house. Per month it was costing him nearly $500 in electricity, and he only got back a little less than half of that by hosting websites for a some of his old college classmates. Eli had hoped that having a small server farm would be helpful in his job search, but the only things it had helped with so far was entertainment. He spent a few hours everyday tinkering with it to keep his skills sharp and stay busy. But that was only going to last until the end of the week, he just couldn't justify the expense anymore, despite his best efforts, and was going to start powering everything off and selling it on Ebay.

  As he prepared to leave on his morning run, he felt a searing pain at the base of his skull and a window popped into his field of view.

  Eli immediately sat down and took a few deep breaths. Unsure of what to, he called his sister, Julie, if only to confirm he wasn't going crazy. She picked up almost immediately.

  "Eli! What the hell was that?" she nearly screamed.

  "So I'm not the only one who is hallucinating? That's a relief!" Eli started to pace around the room.

  "I just turned on the news, I'll put you on speaker."

  "… to what people are calling 'The Notification,' we have found that everyone examined now has a hard lump on the back of their neck. Our medical corespondent has agreed to an X-ray, and we should have more information for you soon. The White House is hosting an emergency press conference in a few minutes, now we go to Aaron in Washington D.C. to give you the latest on …"

  Julie's voice came back to the forefront of the call, "Yeah, definitely not crazy. Though I'm a little scared about the talk of the 'wider multiverse,' does that mean aliens are coming to Earth?"

  "Honestly Jules, I have no idea. I'm going to make breakfast and try to pick up some things from the store before things get to crazy. Hopefully by then this brain scan business will be done and we'll be able to get some more information. If things get crazy in Dallas you are always welcome to come stay with me. Let me know if you need anything, love you, bye"

  "Love you too, call me later if you can. Bye bye." Julie then hung up.

  Eli pulled up to the grocery store, and saw that pretty much everyone else had the exact same idea as him. He found a parking spot at the back of the lot and jogged to the door, passing around a dozen people also making their way in. It was a lot less chaotic than he was expecting inside, so he slowed to a brisk walk and grabbed a cart, making a beeline for the freezer section. The rationale was that everyone would be grabbing cans and other shelf stable foods and ignoring pretty much everything else. He was mostly right, almost all the frozen ingredients were still in stock, but any ready made options were looking a bit sparse. Eli filled his cart as best he could, and checked out.

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  When he got back home, he filled his freezer and was barely able to close it. He wasn't very worried about losing power, since he could cook without it anyways. Eli sat down at his computer and tried to figure out if there was any way to help his job search in the chaos. When he couldn't think of any, he looked at the news to see if there was any more information he was missing. Aside from the X-rays showing the presence of the neural implant, nobody had anymore of an idea on what was happening than what he did. With that in mind, he got up and decided to wait until his neural implant came online.

  Eli tried to think of a good name, but the best he could come up with was "Phil," the name of his elementary school best friend. After he tried to select it another prompt appeared immediately.

  Eli picked the True AI option, obviously; to have a truly intelligent mind in his head was something he couldn't pass up. It wasn't a dream of his per se, but something that had always piqued his interest when reading sci-fi novels. There weren't many examples from the top of his head that would require lots of processing power; he knew that he was probably thinking too small, but was too excited about the prospect to care too much. Another prompt appeared, but this one seemed much less important than the last two; it was just about notification settings. He started to power through all the options, setting up his HUD and connecting to the internet. Finally after he answered the last question, which was what date format he preferred, a final prompt showed up.

  "Phil, status"

  Skills (0/0)

  Class Selection Available

  Eli stood mutely trying to process what he just saw. It wasn't difficult to understand, just so far out of the realm of possibility that he never considered that this was a possible outcome. He expected to see the status of his implant, maybe a progress bar on how soon the True AI would be ready. But to have his life quantified before his eyes in such a dispassionate way was unsettling. Assuming that a 5 was average, he looked at his status sheet a bit dispassionately. Everyone likes to think they are special, but to be actually shown your mediocrity is a bit disheartening. He was, however, pleased that his intelligence and endurance were above average. He started to run initially just to get out of the house, but had come to enjoy it as a part of his daily ritual. Being above average in endurance was extremely validating, but seeing his intelligence score was much less impactful. Not that anyone really believes that they are dumber than the average person, but Eli had always been confident in that portion of himself. He wasn't too surprised about his lower charisma score, he was pretty social in college and had a good group of friends that he kept up with. He always felt like he was along for the ride though, and wasn't sure how missed he would be if he fell out of touch.

  With a deep breath he went to select his class.