[Retrieving Custodian #174239 Samantha Rubens]

  [Physical status: Dead]

  [Metaphysical status: In orbit]

  [Compiling soul]

  [Warning: Data corruption detected]

  [Creating error report]

  [Running SoulRepairWizard_v0.731a]

  [Recompiling]

  Samantha Rubens

  [Lvl 0->3]

  Body: 0

  Sense: 0

  Mind: 0

  Soul: 0

  Free Stat Points: 0->3

  Silver Soulcoins: 1->63

  Average emotion-crystal-core efficiency: 11% (Expand List)

  Essences (0/1)

  Passives: —

  Spells: —

  Augments: —

  [Initializing Soul-Consciousness-Construct]

  “Aaaah!” I tore my eyes open. The pink monster, it was going to kill me, it was going to kill me like Addy and, a-and…

  And I wasn’t in a fume-filled car anymore. I was in a deep, dark space, stars twinkling in the distance to the side of a sickle-shaped moon. The moon. This place was space, which meant that that pink planet-sized thing beneath me was…

  [D?????o??????n?????'????????t????????? ??????l????o???????o????k????????]

  A headache like an icepick to my amygdala ran through me from head to toe. I curled up into a ball, sweating, breathing heavily and trying not to look at the words still hovering in front of my face, or anything else.

  Don’t think about it. Whatever that is, I don’t need to know. It’s just tearing a giant hole into space right next to earth. It isn’t important. Just focus on earth. Look, how beautiful she is.

  Can I see my home from up here?

  Wow. That’s Australia.

  This is kinda chill.

  Just don’t look down.

  “Meow.” My eyes focused on Foggy.

  She was here with me, paddling through space as if it was water. I stretched out a hand towards her and grabbed her. My entire arm was see-through.

  “Oh,” I muttered. “That’s right. I died.”

  I closed my eyes, wrapped around Foggy, and just did nothing for a moment, besides rotating around my own axis.

  Hope Mom and Dad and Lily are alright. I screwed up again. Here lies Sam; she died as she lived: Facilitating car crashes.

  [Tutorial, step 3: Stats, and how to get them]

  “Eh?”

  [All beings are made of the four universal stats. They are:]

  Body: Flesh and bone, the basis of all beings. Includes abilities from bodily strength to speed, from dexterity to durability.

  Sense: Eye and ear, the connection between self and other. Includes abilities, from sense of touch to sense of balance, from a sense’s breadth to acuity.

  Mind: Cortex and stem, the connection of self and self. Includes abilities from instinct to cognition, from mental speed to capacity.

  Soul: Core and node, the connection of self to the universe. Includes abilities from heart-sense to emotion-reading, from thaumaturgical output to finesse.

  Lines of text materialized in front of my face. Wherever they were coming from, it was not from any normal technology. I was pretty sure my AR glasses hadn’t joined me up here in low-earth orbit. Come to think of it, how the heck was I even conscious enough to read this?

  “Wait wait wait.” I flailed in place, which did precisely nothing for me. “Can you run that by me again? I think I missed something important.”

  [Restarting Tutorial]

  [Welcome to The Society, Custodian #174239 Samantha Rubens. Shine bright with the color of your soul!]

  [We are what The Society describes as The System, a conglomeration of semi-autonomous magi-technical systems created by mages of earth. We train, empower, and ultimately prepare the souls of earthlike-lifeforms for all manner of disasters, including convergence events. We reward the worthy. We punish the unworthy. You protect. We curate.]

  [The Society was founded in 1906 when the time traveler Heinz Goodmeyer…]

  My stomach twinged with anxiety. Then I looked down and oh boy that was just an entire overgrown spider-crab leg sticking right out of my gut.

  That shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.

  I touched it. The leg wiggled.

  The ghost-sweat on my ghost-skin pearled before dissipating into space in tiny airy puffs. My heartrate spiked sharply and while a part of me was reliving the feeling of tearing a pink monster off my face, of smashing them against the wall, of watching corpses empty their insides on the ground, the other was quite detached. Yes, this was all horrifying, but on the plus side, I now knew that ghosts had a heartrate. And skin. And sweat, and oh my god I’m dead —

  —A pink meteorite as large as an office building slowly tumbled past me, heading for some place in the pacific—

  — and there are aliens falling from the sky which something ripped open LIKE PAPER. Oh god, is this the end of the world? It’s happening, it’s here. Everybody panic!

  [Emotional distress noted.]

  [Emotion: Fear]

  [Efficiency: 27%]

  [Skipping introduction.]

  [Deploying emotional support mascots.]

  Two drops of light grew out of nothing right in front of me. One resolved into a sort of dumpling-esque creature as large as two fists put together. It had a round, yellow body, and only two limbs which could’ve been arms, or just really long and floppy dogears. The other bit of light turned into a stuffed doll made of water wearing a dark-blue poncho. It in turn had no arms, a frown stitched on its face in place of a mouth and eyes, and a little raincloud floating over its head that accompanied it wherever it went.

  “It is I, Mochi!” the yellow dumpling yelled, blushing, emoting, and filling the air with emojis and sparkly star-effects.

  “And I’m Abyssl.” The puppet sighed. “Not that it matters.”

  The dumpling made an overexaggerated pout. “Oh come on Bee-Bee, that was such a lame first impression. Put a bit more energy into it.”

  “I am the literal envoy of sadness, why should I?” the puppet grouched back, its frown turning even more frown-y as it ducked under Mochi’s surprise-hug. “Ugh. We have work to do, you know.”

  At that, both creatures turned to me.

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” I said with an iron grip on my… spider leg. “Just quietly having an existential crisis over here. I think I’ve accepted that my last neurons are showing me the world's wackiest hallucination before, y’know. I bet I’m going to see the pearly gates, or a light any time now.”

  Mochi paused, before stage-whispering to Abyssl. “Hey, good call on not letting Eek! follow us here. More fear is the last thing this sad mop of soulstuff needs.”

  “She seems unusually raw.” The sad puppet tilted its head. “First time?”

  “What, the whole dying-and-then-floating-in-space-as-a-ghost stuff? Yeah.” I swallowed a mouthful of nothing and averted my eyes. Staring at earth only made me feel homesick, but I stared nonetheless. “So, this is a convergence event.”

  The cloud over Abyssl’s head rumbled. “Happens every now and then. The nine sister planets align, natural portals open, creatures and civilizations exploit them. People die. Maybe the world ends today. Maybe it ends tomorrow. Maybe the cycle of suffering continues, forever and ever.”

  “How very comforting,” I grumbled. “Aren’t you supposed to be my emotional support mascots?”

  Mochi nodded while Abyssl shrugged with its legs. “Oh, we’re totes super emotional!”

  “And we’re here to support you, as much as a sapient computer program can. Or distract you, I guess. I hear dying is stressful, especially for someone so… unprepared.” It sighed. “We’ll have to cut the spiel shorter than usual. First off, do you accept the call?”

  “The call?” I blinked at them for a moment. Foggy had stopped purring and was trying to jump at them, something which I wasn’t going to let happen. Ghosts couldn’t harm people, but no clue about emotional support mascots. “Right. Custodian. I’m a dead Custodian.”

  “Eligible! You are eligible to become a Custodian. Your consent is critical to make the magic stick.” A whole bag of office supplies chalk fell into Mochi’s ear-arms out of nowhere. It immediately began scribbling empty space full with diagrams, numbers, all kinds of things. One of them looked like a person in a tutu shooting laser beams from their hands at obviously alien creatures made of teeth and claws. Everything was garishly yellow. “If you do, you’ll get to learn magic. You can go back to earth, become a kickass warrior nun, and go save the world!”

  “Nun?”

  “Or a princess, or queen, or a, uh, janitor, if that floats your goat. Whatever image makes you feel happy with yourself is fine! You have an extra life after all, for the action that made you eligible in the first place. Which iiis…” Mochi leafed through a clipboard. “Uh. Wow.”

  “Check her hobbies,” Abyssl said in a monotone voice.

  “Wow. You hugged a thousand ghosts to death? You’re metal as fuck, sis, you little psychopomp, you.”

  I blinked at Mochi. “I thought you were the happy one, why do you get to swear like that?”

  “If it makes me happy, I’ll say whatever the honk I will. Chaos! Energy! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

  With a groan, Abyssl floated up to me. “You’re tied for the record for shortest time spent as an associate before becoming a Custodian, by the way. You don’t even know half of what you’ve gotten yourself into. How sad.”

  “But-but-buuut!” Mochi butted in. “That just means there’s that much more to learn! And from learning you will grow and in noticing that growth, you’ll become more sure of yourself, more confident, more happy!”

  I supposed that was true in a general sense, when things were going right. Which, for the record, things weren’t right now. God, I already failed to keep my promise to Mom about Med-school. And then I crashed my best friend’s car. Twice. Surely they wouldn’t miss me too much.

  I’m not the right person to shoulder all this responsibility. I just want to be a good person.

  “What if I don’t accept?”

  “Then you get to choose between the eight afterlives,” Mochi said with a self-satisfied nod before whispering in my ear. “Choose mine. Elysium is a place where you’ll have oodles of fun.”

  “You can also join me in the Lightless Abyss of Eternal Sadness,” Abyssl offered.

  “I… think I’ll pass on that.”

  The water-puppet sighed. “No one ever wants to visit the Lightless Abyss of Eternal Sadness.”

  “You can tell me about the perks next time?” I asked.

  “Next time? That means you’ll do it? Do you consent?” Mochi practically smooshed right into my face.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  I gently pried it off my face. My gaze drifted to Foggy. “Only if you revive my cat.”

  “Her? Oh, pshhh, that’s easy sauce.”

  “It isn’t easy per-se,” Abyssl mumbled. “It’s quite difficult.”

  “Difficult but simple, like all animal souls.” Mochi nodded wisely before pointing an arm-ear at me. “All you have to do is complete the first quest we, the system, give you.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, some distant mote of hope bubbling up in my ghost-heart. First quests were easy in any videogame.

  Hold on a minute. This is a classic Faustian setup. Have we gotten to the part where I sell my soul, or did that already happen? This could be a trap. Then again, if these things were categorically evil, nobody would take the pact.

  Bit of a weak argument, considering my lack of alternatives. I can get Foggy back, but only through them. And even then it isn’t guaranteed.

  They could always give me an impossible quest first.

  “On the condition that I get to pick which quest will give me my cat back.”

  “Well, now that’s too easy,” Mochi said, pouting.

  Abyssl floated down right in front of my face. “You get your pick of the first three quests.”

  “Seven!”

  “Three.”

  Dangit. Can’t blame me for trying to haggle. But three is plenty.

  I looked Abyssl straight in the… mouth. “I’ll do it.”

  Mochi’s ear-arms wiggled around like two whacky inflatable tube men. “Yippie! We have another Custodian! We’re really short on you guys, yanno, between the attrition, the accidents, and the strain. Stress is the number one killer for Custodians. Sometimes, if they’re too stressed, Custodians explode! But don’t worry about that, you’ll earn more than enough extra lives to counterbalance that.”

  Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure about my decision. I opened my mouth when suddenly, my left arm poofed into space-dust.

  The mascots and I stared at the empty space where my ghost-arm was supposed to be.

  “Uh-oh,” Mochi said, biting her ear-arm.

  Abyssl gave me a poke. “Her soul is unstable.”

  “What do you mean my soul is unstable?”

  “I dunno.” Abyssl shrugged. “We’re technically still Beta-testing this whole Custodian thing.”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN CUSTODIANS ARE STILL IN BETA TESTING!?”

  “Oh, I think you have more pressing issues at the moment,” Mochi said with a nervous laugh. “But hey, look on the bright side: Even with one arm you’ll soon be among the most armed people on the planet!”

  Translation: We’re still sending you down because we need you that desperately.

  “C-can’t you magic it back?” I asked. “Please?”

  “It’s your soul, of course I can’t.” Mochi’s gaze roamed over me, then towards my stomach. The giant three-foot long spider limb was still wiggling inside of me, apparently tearing me apart. Something about Mochi’s stare was making the limb wriggle faster, as if it was afraid.

  “Mochi,” Abyssl warned. “Don’t.”

  “Relaaax, I was going to ask for the patient’s consent.” Mochi zipped right in front of my face until all I could see was yellow. “Well? Do you?”

  “I’d like my arm back, yes.”

  I felt it in my entire being when the puppet pulled the spider’s soul-part out of me with a happy “Yoink!”

  [Running SoulRepairWizard_V.801_AlphaBranch_Experimental_DO_NOT_TOUCH]

  “Admin access, secret password, two-factor authentication — I knew you’d say yes, Abyssl — and there we go! Super-duper-duper surgeon Mochi is here to help.” The envoy of joy’s manic laughter didn’t inspire me with confidence. Mochi peeled the spider-limb apart, taking soul stuff and attaching it to my body seemingly at random. Which, y’know, I didn’t understand the details well enough to determine if they were doing a good job or not, so hey, might as well not worry about it.

  The system-script took that time to pop up right in front of my face.

  [The ongoing convergence event requires your presence, Custodian of earth! Prognostics assumed such an event for the year 2049; now, emergency measures must be enacted swiftly for the good of all. Humans, werecreatures, and every manner of earth’s magical beings must band together to form a bastion against sister planets and their spawn or risk total convergence.]

  [Interact with any aspect of the system through touch, voice, eye contact, or thought.]

  “Well, let's hope this works better than the average chat model.”

  [Once again, welcome to the Society, Samantha. Enjoy your stay and have a safe trip. And remember: Personal sacrifice is always rewarded.]

  [Initializing]

  [Buffering]

  [Reserving thaumaturgical bandwidth]

  [Your position in queue: 212]

  I stared at the number slowly ticking down in ones or twos every dozen seconds.

  “Is this supposed to take this long?” I asked Mochi and Abyssl.

  “... teleportation and transmutation infrastructure is expensive and government support has been slow to grow.” the sad puppet said while Mochi shook a soul-slathered ear-fist towards earth.

  “Darn those pesky politicians!”

  “Apparently, even death has bandwidth issues,” I mumbled and tried to tune out the increasingly disturbing sounds coming from around my torso.

  Instead of watching myself go through live soul-surgery, I turned to look at earth. It was a beautiful planet, a little marble of green, brown, and blue in the empty reaches of space. Our marble. Our home.

  [As a Custodian your job will be to slay alien creatures, fulfill quests, and gain rewards to improve yourself with any and all magical and technological means possible, with the ultimate goal of protecting all earthbound life forms.]

  [Confirmed presence of: Deceptores rosei, aka coral-colored deceiver, aka mimic]

  So that’s what they’re called. Mimics. Go figure.

  [Their pestilence must not spread.]

  You didn’t have to tell me twice. I already knew what I had to do. Maybe this was what conviction felt like. I didn’t deserve Elysium anyways, that place was for mythological heroes and people who’d actually done something with their life. All I did was crash my bestie's car.

  “Oh God, Clem’s going to kill me when I get back.”

  [Your position in queue: 12]

  [Newcomer hint: It is recommended to seek shelter immediately after reviving. All non-soulbound gear and modifications are lost between deaths.]

  “Okay, that’s slightly ominous.” I paused.

  “I should warn you,” Abyssl said. “Custodian life doesn’t make you a saint. There are some unstable individuals out there, close to your landing point even. It’s sad, really. If you find them, maybe give them a hug. It’s technically not my place to be telling you, but—”

  “Voila!” Mochi suddenly cried out. “It is done. It lives!”

  I stared down at my torso, wiggling my fingers.

  “Oh. Nice. I can feel my arms again.” Those were my favorite limbs, right after my legs.

  Wow that’s a lot of fingers.

  [Your position in queue: 1]

  [Launching]

  [Extra lives: 1->0]

  +++

  I woke up naked, a brisk wind and the sudden return of gravity making me gasp for air. The electric screech-warbling sound of dozens of coral mimics slammed into me from all around. A little mimic jumped straight at my face and I screamed as it was cut in half, baptizing me in its tarry black blood.

  Someone splashed me with water and threw a towel at my chest.

  I looked up. There was Addy, standing tall above me with sword in hand and a grim look on her face.

  “Get your ass up, they’re spawncamping us!” she yelled.

  “Wh-wuh?” I coughed, spluttering as I wiped alien blood from my cheek. “You’re back too?”

  Her fluffy ears flicked in annoyance.

  “No shit. Here.” She pressed a cardboard box into my hands. “Gun.”

  “Gun?”

  “The weapon that shoots people. You know how to not shoot yourself?”

  “I, uh, have been to the gun range a few times.” Dad always thought it was funny how my interest in his hobbies grew whenever I wanted to get out of boring stuff, like going to Aunt Tuft’s many weddings. Most of the time I just let him show me one or two tricks, then went into the adjacent lodge to play some videogames.

  Should’ve paid more attention. Story of my life.

  Why do I feel so top-heavy though?

  Sensory overload aside, I grabbed the box and began tearing it open with one hand, two hands, three hands, four… hands?

  “Oh my god I have four arms. Why do I have four arms!?”

  There was one on each side, normally attached to the shoulders like usual, and then another on top of that, as if someone had copied and then pasted them a bit further up. Of course I was top heavy, I had two whole new friggin limbs!

  I'm a spider person. Except I seem to be short two arms.

  I clutched my face with all four human arms. Two of them missed, one grabbing an ear and one almost poking my eye out.

  Slowly. Your wires are crossed. Focus on one thing at a time.

  Gently, my two arms — were they my originals? — managed to peel off and tear the plain cardboard box open. Lo and behold there was a… rectangular gun without a grip. Where was the grip? Where was the trigger!? How was I supposed to shoot this gun—

  Oh. One side of the triangle can be twisted ninety degrees into an awkward grip, which also cocks the striker. The trigger was fixed awfully far forward on the frame, the stubby end of the barrel poking out of above it quite awkwardly. The magazine was… oh god, the tiny bullets were stored above the barrel, facing down and slightly towards the back. This was one hell of a screwed up gun, and I was supposed to learn to aim, fire, and probably reload it or die in the coming moments.

  No pressure Samantha. C’mon, extra arms, you can do this.

  I grabbed it with one hand (and punched the box with another), felt its oddly light weight — it was mostly painted plastic — and managed not to accidentally set it off within five seconds of touching it.

  [Piddle Gun 5.7mm: Click, twist, shoot! The affordable, foldable pocket-gun of choice for your semi-auto needs, by H&H. Comes preloaded with a single seven-shot magazine. Price: 8 Soulcoins.]

  “Ack!” Left hand #2 punched the words, reflexively. They flowed around my hand like ink before rematerializing in their previous state. I paused. “I don’t have my AR glasses.”

  Becoming a Custodian came with getting a heads up display burned straight onto my cornea, apparently.

  Oh god, what if a pixel gets burnt in forever? What if I can’t get it to close? What if—

  Another screech and shower of tar blood caught my attention from the right.

  We were in the middle of the football field, about forty yards away from the trashed parking lot. The short grass was alive with danger, little four-legged headcrab-rejects skittering towards us at speed. Addy, in something akin to a half-weretanuki form, was tearing them apart with her sword, but she only had so many arms to do that with.

  Okay, remember what Dad said. Secure grip, wide stance, always be aware of what’s behind your target.

  I tried standing up, only to fall on my ass. My legs were shivering. I was barely a minute old. I wasn’t ready for this.

  One of the smaller mimics swerved around, gunning it towards me.

  My gun clicked. No bang.

  The safety. Shit.

  By the time I’d removed the safety it was already leaping straight at me. All I could do was block it with one bare arm. The pink devil latched onto it and immediately I could see its limbs transmute into knives and jagged blades.

  “Crap. Shit.” I pushed the piddly gun straight into its side and pulled the trigger.

  Bang!

  A dull thump shook its body so hard it flew off, tearing a chunk of skin with it.

  Bang Bang!

  My shots tore into the lawn all around it as it squirmed on its back, shots ringing out again and again until the final shot burrowed into its center of mass.

  [You have killed: 1.5 kg Coral Crawler]

  [Soul coins: 63->65]

  The gun clicked empty, the empty trigger pull catapulting the tiny magazine off the top and a couple feet away. My breaths came short and quick. I looked at the corpse, then at my arm. Blood. There was my blood again.

  Ooh, wow, that’s a lot.

  At least the little critters didn’t hurt to look at even a tenth as much as they had before. Maybe it was because I had other pains to distract me. Maybe I was built different in more places than just my arms.

  “Ammo!” Addy yelled as she tossed two clips at me. To my embarrassment and increasing panic, I slapped one out of the air, but caught and loaded the second one successfully. There were so many dead mimics at her feet. Dammit, wasn’t there anything I could do besides sit around like a complete buffoon?

  Stats. Right. The tutorial said I had stats.

  Relax Samantha. It’s like a videogame, except you skipped the tutorial, and now you’re out of extra lives.

  The dang blue words were still stuck in front of my face, shoved to the side since I still hadn’t discovered how to close notifications with my mind. With my stat sheet pulled up I tried clicking, yelling, blinking, and gesturing wildly at it until one of those things got a response.

  [Would you like to spend your [3] free stat points?]

  Stat points?

  “Yes!” I yelled. “Put. Every. Thing. In. Body. Please!”

  It felt like a full-body workout that rushed over me in seconds, then again as the change came in waves. Nothing on my body showed the immediate gains, but I felt just that little bit stronger, my arms more limber. And with that came confidence.

  [Body 0->3]

  A mimic finally decided that approaching the raging ten-foot tanuki-lady with a sword wasn’t the path to success. It turned, warbled, then sped right for me on four spiky-sharp blade-legs.

  I understood my task better the second time around.

  Aim. Fire. One shot, two shots, three shots, another kill. Four shots remaining.

  I scanned the rest of the football field, ears ringing, eyes burning from the bite of sweat. But the horde of hat-sized mimics had thinned out considerably.

  The last of them fell squealing against Adelaide’s blade. With a grumble, she pried it off of her sword, standing there gleaming with sweat and black tar. She sniffed the air, then abruptly turned around and stalked right up to me.

  “You all right?”

  “I’m alive, h-haha.” I was trembling again. God, crap, why did I have to wake up to this? Nothing about me said that I could handle this kind of reception. I needed another tutorial, or maybe five minutes to breathe and put on some clothes first.

  Right. Revival came without a change of clothes.

  Oh hey, it’s much easier to cover up with four hands instead of two.

  I pressed my eyes closed only to reopen them to Adelaide holding my left upper arm straight and licking it with long tongue strokes that sent a shiver down my spine.

  “What are you doing!?”

  “Licking your wounds?” Stating the obvious. “Weretanuki spit is antiseptic and hella good at clotting blood. No need to waste coins on chrono bandages. ‘S cheaper this way.”

  She was right. A glossy glue-like layer covered the wound. I was no longer bleeding. Huh. I twisted my arm left and right, which also twisted my other left arm left and right.

  “Wow. That is so cool.”

  She just looked up at me with unblinking eyes. “I’m not buying you any clothes.”

  “Yeah, uh, right.” I looked towards the gun. “I can pay you back for this if you want? Seriously, it saved my life.”

  She seemed to debate furiously with herself for a moment before squeezing out a tortuous “No.”

  Now I really wanted to pay her back. I searched the interface that had popped up in front of my face. Apparently the system kept an exact tally of soulcoins. Since I didn’t feel any silver clinking in my pockets, those were probably just numbers on a sheet, like a bank account.

  Ahah! Found the transaction window.

  I sent her eight soulcoins for the gun, plus one for each magazine. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it.

  “Alright. Uh. Good to see you again. After, y’know.”

  “Dying? Screwing up royally?” She let out a rumbling groan. “This is all wrong. I’m not supposed to be here, but now I’m stuck in a convergence dome with a, a… a newbie!”

  Wow, rude. Also, dome? What dome? “I’m a bit new to this, so, any pointers?”

  “Avoid the big ones,” she grouched.

  “Yes, I guessed as much,” I deadpanned. “Anything else? C’mon, work with me here, Addy.”

  She sighed in exasperation, enunciating each dot with a flick of her shapeshifting katana. “Don’t die. Don’t get scammed. And don’t charge a spell with the wrong emotions.”

  I stared at her and she stared right back. Then she turned, before wordlessly stomping off towards the parking lot. Oh boy, getting her to open up was going to take a lot of effort.

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