Beth’s job was suspended for three days on account of aliens.

  Well, at least there was that.

  As a result, she was home when they were visited by Peter, bringing Alistair with him. Or perhaps, it might have be Alistair visiting, bringing Peter with him. It was suspicious to see Peter in the middle of the skill auction when they hadn’t seen a hair of him during quieter times.

  “Peter!” her father said, bringing them into the living room. “And Alistair. How good to see you. Do you want to join us for lunch? I’m sure Sophie can whip something up.”

  Beth empathised with Sophie’s look of flat panic when it seemed like Peter was about to accept.

  Fortunately, Alistair said firmly, “No, thank you. That’s very kind of you, Michael, Sophie, but we’ve already eaten.”

  “Well, sit down, sit down,” he said. “Sophie, something to drink.”

  There wasn’t enough space for everyone. The twins were pushed forward into the kitchen while Beth was left to stand awkwardly by the door. Alistair didn’t sit down either.

  “Is nettle tea alright?” asked Sophie. “Or Beth’s prepared some acorn coffee, if you’d like?”

  “Acorn coffee sounds perfect, thank you,” said Alistair.

  Peter asked for the same. Sophie walked through the twins to get some hot water from the thermos and Beth followed to grab a folding chair. She would have passed some to the twins, but there really wasn’t room for that many chairs in the living room.

  “It’s so good to see you, Peter, my boy. I wanted to thank you again for getting the twins into school at Pines. Good to have someone keeping people on their toes and doing what they ought.”

  Peter had done precisely nothing about getting the twins into the school. Gwen’s landlord had been the one who had done them a favour and stream-lined the process.

  “Oh, you know,” said Peter. “Just doing what I can.”

  Beth rolled her eyes before she realised that Alistair was watching her. She smoothed her expression immediately. Alistair had the worst habit of catching her right at her least charitable.

  Sophie returned with the mismatched mugs that were decorated in things university students found amusing. Alistair took the one swearing at him without blinking.

  “Drink, drink,” urged their father, like he had just removed a fine wine from its fancy presentation box. “What brings you around? Not that you’re not always welcome, of course.”

  “Oh,” said Peter, “in the wake of the announcement, Pines has decided to have expanded elections. I’ve been asked to stand as Deputy Mayor.”

  Deputy Mayors were elected? Beth thought they were appointed. She shook the thought away. They were obviously doing their own thing. The elections were not a result of the alien announcement. There was no way they could have proposed, agreed and organised that all in a single afternoon. At most, it had just accelerated existing plans. People had slowly stopped believing that the world would ever return to normal, and this gave them an excellent excuse to tear the mask off entirely.

  “How amazing,” said their father, perfectly sincerely. “Congratulations. But I suppose it’s not surprising, really. You’re just the person to get in there and make some sort of sense of the whole mess. I always knew that you were destined for great things. I said so, didn’t I Sophie?”

  “Yes, dear,” said Sophie.

  Beth was confused, because, well… Peter? She meant no disrespect with that thought, but Peter had been a PhD student three months prior. Even for a deputy role, he wasn’t appropriate. He was too young, too inexperienced, and surely, he had too thin a support base. She was sure that none of this had happened in The Book. It would have mentioned anything that big. She was tempted to dismiss his running as a way to pad the numbers, or a protest. The local equivalent of voting for Lord Buckethead. But Alistair… no, Alistair would not be putting his weight behind a novelty candidate. If he was behind it, if the de la Hayes were behind it, then something more serious was going on.

  “You see, we thought it would be nice if you joined us for some of it,” said Peter, sounding very much like their father in that moment. It was the exact tone they both used when they asked for help while acting like they were giving a favour.

  “Of course, anything!” said her father. “What do you need from us?”

  “It makes a good impression if the candidate’s family actively supports them. Without television, we need to let people know that in person.”

  In other words, they wanted Dad – and possibly Sophie as well – to go door to door canvasing for votes.

  “During an auction for superpowers given to us by aliens?” asked Beth.

  “Best time to get your foot in the door,” said Alistair, with a sardonic edge. “Everyone has questions they want answered.”

  Beth supposed that was true. But what kind of person looked at alien invasions and thought ‘This is an excellent political opportunity’?

  “Of course we’d be thrilled to do everything we can,” said her father. “Where do we start?”

  Peter pulled out notes and a map.

  “Beth! Set up the table!”

  Beth returned her chair and herded the twins out of the kitchen back into the living room, like they were playing a silent game of musical chairs. Alistair followed her and moved to pick up the folding card table himself.

  “How are you coping?” asked Alistair. “The whole auction thing is rather a lot, isn’t it?”

  “That’s certainly an understatement,” said Beth.

  “Do you have any questions yourself?”

  “Oh, so many. How much time do you have?”

  “Lay it on me.”

  Beth swivelled the table to get the most possible room and started unfolding the chairs around it. “Do we know why the twins didn’t get the option to bid on skills?”

  “From what we have been able to determine, you have to be at least seventeen years and three months to bid on skills.”

  “Eighteen years from conception?” asked Beth.

  “It’s as good a theory as any.”

  It was as much as Beth had expected, but it was good to get it confirmed. She hesitated longer on the next question. Alistair was in the military, and Beth didn’t want to bring attention to herself. But she thought she had an idea of Alistair – it would be beneath him to report her. And surely, it would not be surprising for anyone to simply notice.

  “What do you think about “Well-worn Pathways” from group three?” she asked. “It looks like it accelerates the rate at which you level up all your skills. Although obviously you need to have at least a second skill to get any value out of it.”

  Alistair grimaced.

  “You don’t like it?” asked Beth in surprise.

  “Theoretically, I agree with you,” said Alistair. “If this was a computer game, I would snatch it up. I’d want to optimise for the highest combined levels. But my top concern isn’t being at the top of some leader board in twenty years’ time. My concern is surviving the next twenty years.”

  Beth grabbed a tablecloth from the drawer and smoothed it down. The tablecloth was a work of art. Someone’s hand-embroidered masterpiece they had ended up trading for extra food. “Do you think it’s dangerous to bid on more than one skill?”

  “Well, not quite. I suspect that two skills will be the goldilocks option for most people.”

  “You’re saying it’s safe for us to bid on two skills, because enough other people will do the same.” That was exactly the type of meta game thinking that Beth hated when playing poker.

  “I do,” agreed Alistair. “Although I won’t deny the absolutely safest option is to bid everything on just one.”

  “But which one?” asked Peter, coming to stand at the connecting door. “That’s the important question.”

  “Calley wanted to get the dimensional space one,” said Oakley, from behind him.

  Peter turned. “I suppose then it’s good that you can’t bid on skills if you’re under seventeen. That’s exactly the absurd choice a twelve--”

  “Thirteen!”

  “—thirteen-year-old would choose. It’s not like it will turn into a whole world-fragment with suns and weather patterns like those ones from the absurd cultivation novels Beth reads.”

  Beth glowered at his back. She didn’t make fun of Peter’s interests.

  “I didn’t!” said Oakley.

  “Yeah, you were worried that you might run out of matches,” retorted Calley.

  Put that way, it even sounded like a decent option. Matches and lighters would eventually run out, and starting fires was difficult. Beth had a mental image of people going door to door at sunset, lighting stoves for people.

  “You don’t know that. It could upgrade into a fireball.”

  “And the space one could upgrade into something useful, too.”

  “Either way,” said Peter meanly, “neither of you get any.”

  Oakley was breathing in that quick way that threatened a melt-down. Beth couldn’t see them, but from the sounds she would guess that Calley pulled him out of the living-room and into Calley and Beth’s shared bedroom.

  “Peter,” Sophie reprimanded.

  “It doesn’t help to coddle them, Sophie. This isn’t a game. This is the rest of our lives.”

  Beth still hadn’t received a firm answer out of Alistair as to why he didn’t like the acceleration skill, other than the suggestion that it was too slow. But she didn’t want to get into it in front of Peter.

  “What would be your suggestion for skills?” Beth asked Alistair instead.

  “My honest suggestion actually goes a little bit against the party line,” said Alistair. “Don’t pass this along when you’re knocking on doors.”

  “I promise,” said Beth dryly.

  “Don’t get me wrong, either,” said Alistair. “We don’t have any reason to believe Pines is in any danger. But as I said earlier, I think that the long term should be our focus, no matter how unlikely the danger might be. My suggestion is ‘Sovereign Sphere’ and ‘Warding Shell’ from Group one. The first pushes zombies away, saving you and your teammates. The second prevents infections by protecting against skin breaks. That way, you don’t have to worry about getting your timing exactly right when confronted.”

  Beth supposed she finally had an answer for why The Book claimed she’d chosen two very particular defensive spells.

  “It comes down to whether you expect to be part of a team, then?” asked Beth. “‘Sovereign Sphere’ if you expect to be confronting zombies in the framework of other well-equipped fighters. ‘Warding Shell’ if you expect to be alone or running away.”

  “I suppose that’s not wrong, but my suggestion is actually to take both. You never know what situations you might end up in. It gives you full coverage, whether you’re advancing or retreating.”

  Beth asked, “If you’re concerned about facing infected – or even just planning on scavenging areas that aren’t entirely safe – wouldn’t it be better to have some combat skills?”

  That got her a very sharp look. Beth was a surprised. It was a question that was a natural follow on from Alistair’s own suggestions, surely? Then Beth realised. No one had mentioned the plan to scavenge yet. Not in her hearing, at any rate. That was information she’d acquired from The Book.

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  “If, hypothetically, anyone would be involved in salvaging supplies, then we wouldn’t want them to have combat skills. We’d want the combat to be handled by the military. The civilians would be strictly support staff. We’d prefer them to have defensive skills so that we wouldn’t have to worry about them endangering themselves or us.”

  Beth didn’t let herself panic. No matter what Alistair suspected of her, it couldn’t possibly be close to the truth. Since it sounded like the scavenging idea had already been discussed within the army, he probably just thought some friend of hers had said something they shouldn’t have. It would be fine.

  Once she’s recovered her equilibrium, Beth could take the time to consider what he’d said. She realised she’d fundamentally misunderstood something. The money-making opportunities The Book mentioned weren’t about killing people. In fact, it sounded like she wouldn’t have the chance to kill infected even if she wanted to. It wouldn’t be collecting tokens directly. It would just be working in a profession that would be paid disproportionately highly.

  Beth wondered what skills Alistair himself would be taking. Not the defence ones he recommended, certainly. He might not even be given a choice in which skills he took – the military might make that decision for him. Beth was willing to bet he’d probably be bidding with more than the default points as well. She wasn’t tactless enough to ask.

  Peter sat down at the table and started spreading out the papers, handing a sheet not only to their father, but to Beth as well. It turned out she was expected to join in the canvassing effort, at least until the auction itself. She sat down and dutifully studied the talking points. Peter provided tips and tricks and ran them through practice conversations.

  They put on the hand-altered tabards in grey and dusty rose with the letters ‘IP’ stitched on them and set out for a trial run. Beth suspected that Peter wanted to supervise her father at least once before they were trusted on their own. They packed into an electric people carrier with Alistair driving, itself an absurd display of privilege. Beth was in the very back row of the three with the twins, an uncomfortable fit even in the large vehicle. The twins were getting to take up almost as much space as an adult, even when they were sitting still. Oakley took up much more space when he was wriggling. It took some effort to calm him down, and only then did she notice they were hindered by a full-blown demonstration.

  BID ONE! SAVE ALL! BID ONE! SAVE ALL!

  The protestors had made signs from old wallpaper and were walking in circles while chanting. They weren’t intentionally stopping the car, but they were taking up most of the road. The car’s progress was reduced to a walking pace, which Beth had to admit she found satisfyingly ironic.

  “What’s all that about?” asked her father. “Don’t these people have anything better to do than wander about the streets making a fuss?”

  “They’re a group who think we should all only bid a maximum of one point for any skill we want,” explained Alistair. “The idea is to maximise the amount of food humanity could get.”

  Oakley pointed out the obvious. “What happens if there’s more bids than skills available?”

  “Anyone’s guess,” replied Alistair. “They seem to believe they will be distributed randomly. Or perhaps based on how early or late they placed their bids.”

  “But maybe no-one will get them,” said Oakley. “And no one will be saved.”

  “Total nonsense anyway,” said their father. “They probably just want everyone else to bid one, so they can bid more and get everything that they want. Absolutely ridiculous. How stupid do they think people are?”

  “They might be sincere,” said Beth. “The theory isn’t wrong. If everyone bids one, and all the skills are distributed, then it’s not like the losers are any worse off than if everyone had bid high and they lost. The winners gain a lot, but no one is harmed.”

  “They’re harmed in their feeling of fairness,” pointed out Alistair. “At least if the winners bid even higher, then everyone ends up with the same value of gifts. Well, the value they themselves were willing to ascribe to the points, anyway.”

  “You think that people will be happier if other people don’t do well, even if it makes no difference to what they get themselves?” asked Beth.

  “I absolutely guarantee they’ll be happier,” he replied. “People don’t like seeing others get what they believe should have gone to them.”

  “Putting in low votes isn’t an official Pines recommendation, then?” asked Beth.

  “Officially, Pines has no opinion. Unofficially, if they want to sacrifice themselves for the rest of us, then more power to them.”

  Her father snorted. “I will eat my socks if even a single one of those loudmouths actually follows through with it.”

  “Not a bad idea to make sure that all bids have at least one person bidding only a single point,” said Sophie. “Then if there is an excess of any skills, everyone only has to pay the minimum.”

  That was unexpectedly perceptive, and Beth complimented the idea. Alistair was also very kind, and Beth wondered if the military was already planning on a system like that. If every person just spent two or three points blanketing all the skills, it might be enough to make sure none went to waste.

  Alistair turned aside to miss the rest of the protesters, taking them off the main roads and into single-width lanes lined by wildly blooming blackthorns. Beth had never noticed the scent before – it had always been drowned out by car fumes. But now a honey-almond fragrance filled the air instead. With white petals falling around them, they reached their destination.

  Their father carefully unrolled the map and sent them off in teams to the marked houses. Why some houses where marked and others were skipped was not explained to Beth. Alistair himself was not permitted to participate, so he remained with the car. It was probably a good idea to protect it anyway.

  “Remember the official line,” Peter reminded. “The infection is under control, the aliens are kindly stepping in, and the skill auction is a gift. If they push back, drop it. Retreat to saying the party is investigating very seriously and you’re just so proud of me stepping up and looking out for people. Don’t say anything at all about the opposing candidates.”

  Beth didn’t think any of them knew anything about the opposing candidates, so that much was easy.

  Beth knocked on doors with the twins. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, but it wasn’t fun either. People were eager to talk to her. To talk to anyone who sounded like they knew what was going on. Just not about the elections. She shrugged to herself and spent most of her time telling them things that might help. That the government was working overtime to ensure that the food-substitute was safe and effective and things were looking very hopeful. That there was no sign of the infection getting worse because of the ‘aliens thing’, and that Pines quarantine measures continued to be successful. That they could always bid at least a little on two to three skills, even if they later chose not to use them. That yes, it was all very scary, and hard to believe, and none of it was fair. That Beth understood exactly how they felt.

  Oakley ratted her out to Alistair when they got back to the car.

  “Good job,” he said.

  “Really?” asked Beth.

  “Yes,” said Alistair. “You took the time to listen and sympathise with them. They’re more likely to trust you, and the people you represent, because of that. When it comes to vote, they’ll remember the colours. People never remember names anyway.”

  Beth looked down at the tabard. Fair enough, she supposed.

  After that trial run, they were sent off to cover their own ground. Peter left in the car with Alistair. Beth watched him leave and found she didn’t have the slightest desire to talk to him or hand over the tokens. She had agreed to canvass for him. That would have to be enough. It wouldn’t have been the way Beth would have chosen to spend that precious time before the auction, but surprisingly, it helped. The physical activity gave her time to think, while discussing everyone’s fears gave her the opportunity to think about her own and prioritise what really mattered.

  She did have somewhat of an embarrassing moment when they met another team, in different colours, also knocking on doors – and realised that it was her boss from the allotment clearing team, Theo. It seemed that suspension of her work was less on account of aliens, and more on account of campaigning. They waved awkwardly and walked in opposite directions.

  She did her last trip on the morning of the equinox and returned home early. As the deadline approached, she worked in her little rooftop garden with the bedroom curtains closed behind her. She carefully removed the plastic-folder cold frame and watered the plants below. The folders were already beginning to bleach and thin. They probably wouldn’t last more than a few more weeks, but that was enough time to take them into the warmer weather.

  Beth was very proud of her garden. The ‘French Breakfast’ radishes had been a surprise and a joy at how quickly they had grown, with the greens being just as valuable as the little tubers. The lettuces and spinaches were still too small to harvest much, but it wouldn’t be long. Beth deeply felt how much she owed Gwen for getting her the seeds. Her garden couldn’t possibly provide the family with many calories, but it was doing an amazing job providing them with a variety of tastes.

  Once the last of the garden chores was finished, Beth wiped her hands carefully clean of the sticky soil. It wasn’t necessary. There wouldn’t anything to touch. But it felt oddly disrespectful to be at anything less than her best. The system provided the same three gongs as a five-minute warning, but Beth had long since placed her bids. She compressed herself to sit down on the little walkway, the wood pleasantly warm against her skin, and waited out the last moments.

  With her official points, she’d bid half each for the two defensive skills Alistair had recommended. Exactly the same two from The Book she had been so confused by. It wasn’t a surrender to fate, she told herself. After all, she’d changed the direction of The Book before. The Book had just happened to make the best suggestion after all.

  She had wavered back and forth on her unofficial purchases. In the end, it had been Alistair’s commentary about planning for the next twenty years that had decided her. The Book didn’t cover very much time, all things considered. There was absolutely no guarantee that the infection-aliens didn’t have something in mind for step two. She could not prioritise a short-term debt over the rest of her life.

  She put a full eight and half tokens worth of points bid against the skill acceleration, 1224 points. Beth wanted that skill, desperately. More skills meant more power, and levelling up would mean more skills. She wasn’t even sure if that vast number of points would be enough, but she was sure this would be her very last chance to get the skill at all.

  The remaining 72 points were placed three at a time against the top twenty-four other skills she’d identified. Enough to beat the ‘bid one’ crowd, and enough to beat the people who bid two in order to beat the people bidding one. Not enough to beat any determined bidders. That was fine. She wasn’t expecting to win them all. She would be happy just to win one.

  She didn’t reserve any points for food. She supposed was betting – to pardon the pun – that at least one of those skills would come out cheap enough to give her the buffer.

  With one longer gong, the auction ended. The interface appeared automatically. The skills were awarded. She closed her eyes, and said a short prayer – to whom, she wasn’t entirely sure. The god she still didn’t believe in? The aliens? The system itself? Then she checked her results, starting from the most important.

  Skill acceleration. Won at 990 – the starting seven-twenty plus two tokens, she noted absently.

  Push-back. Won at 228.

  Skin shield. Won at 246.

  Dimensional space. Won at 3.

  Beth made sure the curtains were still closed and then danced a little jig. She’d done it. She’d won.

  That dimensional space had been the hardest one to maintain her discipline for. She had been so very tempted to bid higher. But she hadn’t, and now she didn’t have to feel guilty, because it wasn’t as if she hadn’t wasted points on it. That she had bid at all was absolutely none of Oakley or Peter or her father’s business. She supposed she should be grateful to them. It was due to people like them, who dismissed it as lacking any sort of utility, that she’d gained it.

  After that, she checked the rest. She’d only won two others, both group two, and for two points each. One that had something to do with plants and temperatures, Strengthened Essence, and one she had no idea what it did but looked interesting - Heartfelt offerings, the womb of nature, overflowing your soul. Those could wait until later.

  She did mourn briefly for the other skills she might have won if she’d bid more. Would ten points have done it? Twenty? but she knew she was being greedy. Six skills, and enough points to keep her in food for three years, even if she ate nothing else. It was an excellent result. Everyone else would be green with envy if they knew how much she had.

  The instructions for activating her skills seemed straightforward. Unable to resist, she started with the dimensional space skill. After a few moments of effort, Beth observed a tiny little volume, roughly the size of a dice. Observe wasn’t quite accurate, as the sense she used wasn’t quite sight, but Beth could agree with the analogy. Extradimensional space visible, 2.78cm on each side. ‘Visible’, because all she could do with it was look at it. She couldn’t see past it to anything interesting on the other side. She couldn’t poke her finger into it. She couldn’t feed it anything. If she concentrated just right, she knew it was there. That was it.

  Beth put aside her disappointment. She had known it would start off useless, even if this was more useless than she had imagined. It was not her focus now. It would be a future problem.

  The skill accelerator skill, Well-worn Pathways, didn’t require any conscious effort to maintain. It had no component she could activate or do anything with at all. It simply gave her the level description: 2% faster levelling while actively using a skill. She decided to skip the knock-back skill, Sovereign Sphere. It had active component, but it would only work on infected. Beth would not have any way of telling if it was doing anything until she was close to one.

  The skin shield one, Warding Shell, that she could immediately test. At level 1, it granted her three seconds of protection against moderate slashing damage.

  When bidding on it, she had been somewhat concerned that was three seconds per day, or something equally miserable. Fortunately, it was significantly superior to that. It was three sustained seconds followed by a six second break to reset. Even better, the timer only started from the moment the skin would otherwise have been broken. Her skill also alerted her to when that was occurring, so it would not take her by surprise.

  She activated it and very hesitantly pressed the blade of her secateurs to the back of her forearm. A second too late, she thought she should have cleaned the blades with one of her precious alcohol wipes first, in case it didn’t work. But it didn’t matter, because it worked. Her skin receded from the blade like soft rubber.

  This was the moment that Beth had been looking forward to for months. She officially had superpowers.

  Beth hadn’t noticed just how tense she had been until she relaxed. She was in Pines, where the only infected outbreak had long since been taken care of. In addition, she was in full sunlight, and well out of reach of even the most determined attacker. She knew there was no real risk. But now, with these skills, she was at no risk at all. Three seconds was plenty of time to register the presence of an infected and use knockback – which in turn, would give her the six seconds to recover her protection. No matter how close an infected got, she could protect herself. Staying alive no longer depended on other people, or on The Book being entirely accurate. She could save herself.

  After an afternoon of playing, she reached her limits. It wasn’t quite exhaustion. It was closer to the feeling of trying to exercise with flu, or to hang on a pullup bar after already giving everything. It was an important thing to discover that skill usage wasn’t unlimited. She’d need to find the limits in safety and not end up in danger unexpectedly when her protection failed her. The next day she tried again with a kitchen timer. About an hour later, she heard the gong. With dawning hope, she brought up her menus.

  Yes. She had acquired a point to level up.

  Beth was beyond relieved. Despite the hints from The Book and the description of the accelerator, she had been half-afraid that the only way to acquire levels would be to kill infected – or just kill in general. But this just required effort. Even better, she could assign her point to any of her skills. She could level up the knock-back skill before she ever having to expose herself. To check the effect, she put it into the skin shield anyway. Protection from slicing damage for 3.25 seconds, requiring a 5.75 second break.

  That was plenty, she told herself firmly. It was only the second day. She just had to do this every day, and they would rack up. The accelerator would only be her cheat code if she maximised levelling, so that’s what she needed to do. She would stay ahead of the curve. She would level up her two defensive skills so that she would be a safe candidate for the scavenging team, if it came to that. And eventually, she would level up her dimensional space and find out what the other skills did.

  She had the rest of her life to see just how far she could go.