Jack looked around desperately for his backpack but only found dirt, rocks, bushes, and arm's length away from him, just past the rhododendron, a cliff edge. He was kneeling in a rhododendron bush, and it wasn't the one he'd been traversing before.
He looked up the slope, searching for his backpack, but didn't find it.
Damn! Did he lose his grip on the rhododendron and lose his pack while tumbling down the slope?
With the memory of the golden, glowy messages still fresh in his mind, he wondered what had really happened. He wasn't certain where he was, but it was possible he had lost his grip on the rhododendron he'd been traversing and taken a tumble down the slope. If this was true, then it was possible he'd struck his head, and the messages were just some kind of head trauma induced hallucination. His head was throbbing painfully, but when he checked, he couldn't find any blood, so he wasn't sure if he'd struck his head hard enough to cause a hallucination.
His thirst demanded he find water and, given that water flows downhill, going down the slope would have been the wiser choice. Except, on the other side of the bush he was in, was a sharp drop and a long fall. There was no way he could safely go that direction.
He pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was two in the afternoon, two days later. He'd been in the nothingness for two days! No wonder he was so thirsty. At the start of his hike, he'd put his phone in airplane mode to conserve battery charge. There was no reception on the trail and he didn't want it to drain the battery trying to find a cell tower. And, since he was outside coverage range, there was no point in taking his phone out of airplane mode to call for help.
He looked up the slope. This is going to suck! He thought. Even on his hands and knees, he would just slide back down unless he had something to hold on to. So, he plotted a course through the small trees and bushes, hoping there would be enough hand and footholds to make it to leveler ground.
As he began his climb, he noticed other aches and pains. Besides his head and back, his hips, right knee, and left ankle also throbbed with pain. As he climbed, he felt lethargic and weak and realized he was also extremely hungry.
Part of him just wanted to lie down and rest, but his overpowering thirst drove him onward and upward. The nearest source of water, assuming this was terra, was near the trailhead, only a few hundred meters from his car. In the other direction was Lake Valhalla, but it was further away than his car and wouldn't solve his hunger.
As he climbed, he thought about the chain of events that led him to be on that trail two days ago.
His parents, both orphans, had died in a car crash when he was ten, killed by a drunk driver. Having no next of kin, the government placed him in the foster care system. Still reeling from the loss of his parents, he was bounced around from one foster home to another. In each case, the family was not prepared to help a boy cope with devastating loss. It was sheer luck he was eventually placed with Fran and Jacob. Their practical, no-nonsense worldview was like that of his birth parents and provided him with the sense of familiarity, of family, he had thought lost. By the time they adopted him, he was already thinking of them as his second parents.
Disaster had struck his life a second time when Jacob had died in a car crash while delivering parts for his employer, a national auto-parts supplier. At first, the investigators had thought Jacob had just fallen asleep at the wheel. But when the toxicology report came back, showing signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, they realized he had succumbed to exhaust fumes.
Fran, both distraught and enraged, had sued Jacob's employer. Jacob had complained about the exhaust fumes many times, but the company had ignored his complaints. Fran had won the legal battle and collected a large settlement, but the struggle had left her emotionally exhausted. Throughout the ordeal, Jack had tried to help as much as he could, doing all the household chores, but Fran insisted he focus on studying and maintaining his grades.
Disaster struck a third time when Fran was diagnosed with cancer. She had been suffering minor symptoms, like weakness, headaches, and nausea. And they had assumed the symptoms were caused by the stress of her legal battle against Jacob's neglectful employer. But when the symptoms didn't abate after their victory, the doctors were forced to re-assess her condition. When they finally diagnosed her, it was too late. She had stage 4 cancer and her prognosis was bleak.
Throughout her battle, she had remained firm in her stance that Jack should stay focused on his academic future. She had been very pragmatic in her outlook, telling him, "No amount of wishful thinking is going to change the outcome. I will die. The best we can hope for is that I last a little longer. And I will be happy if I live long enough to see you graduate with honors."
In the end, she got her wish and attended Jack's graduation ceremony, but died a week later. She was a fighter, and it seemed fitting that her final resting place be somewhere named Valhalla. So her final wish was to be cremated and her ashes scatter on Lake Valhalla. He'd just finished that and was heading home when he'd blacked out and received Genesis Heart.
His climb was getting more and more difficult, his strength waning as his dehydrated and food starved body struggled to support his strenuous effort. Eventually, his need to rest overcame his desire to continue, and he stopped, rolling over to lie on his back with his feet pressed against the root ball of a bush to keep him from sliding back downslope.
As he lay there hoping his body could dredge up some more energy, he wondered, did he really get a System? Or did he suffer some kind of head trauma induced hallucination? He didn't have any memory of falling down the slope so he wasn't sure if it was the Genesis Heart installation that had caused him to lose his grip on the rhododendron, or if he had just slipped and the head trauma had erased his memory of the fall. And, after the [Genesis Heart Installation Complete] message, there had been nothing, no indication that he had a System.
In many web novels, the System only responded to certain words or gestures. So, even though he was alone in a forest and there was probably no one for kilometers, he still felt embarrassed when he said out loud, "Status".
Nothing.
"System Activate."
Nothing.
"Help, Tutorial, Information, Abracadabra, Shazam, Talk to me damn it!"
Nothing, Nothing, Nothing.
No response.
Was it all just a hallucination? He'd checked the back of his head and there was no blood. He had miraculously avoided getting cut or impaled during his tumble down the slope. And no blood implied that he didn't hit his head very hard. In fact, the earlier throbbing had already reduced somewhat. What had really happened? He didn't remember reading any novels that involved something named Genesis Heart, so he wasn't sure why he would hallucinate about one.
Why did systems need verbal interfaces, anyway? Why not have an intuitive mental connection directly to the System? Remembering the sensation he had when he'd first "blacked out". He focused on what it felt like before the messages appeared. As soon as he tried again to feel that calm floating in nothingness sensation, his vision went black and he, again, found himself floating in nothingness.
Does this prove I'm not suffering from brain trauma? He wondered. Thinking about returning to reality, his vision returned, and he found himself again laying on his back on a steep slope. Then he focused on the nothingness and again found himself back in the calm nothingness. He exited, then re-entered the nothingness. Then again. As he repeatedly transitioned into and out of the nothingness, he found that the nothingness gained tangibility in his mind. Like it was a separate space, he could enter and leave. When he entered the nothingness for the fifth time, a message appeared in his mind with the same sense of golden glowyness.
[Achievement: Solidified connection to Soul Space]
[Reward: White Room]
Before his mind fully registered the new messages, a plain white room replaced the nothingness.