Zavier blinked as the darkness cleared away, the room coming into focus. His internal clock made it feel as if more time had passed than what must have. He looked over to the kids and saw their expressions coming into focus as well.
"Well, that was weird," he said as he stretched, preemptively bracing himself against the familiar knee and back pain. When the expected pain never arrived it occurred to him that his joints didn't hurt at all, despite the kneeling. A quick moment of concentrating on his body and he realized he felt really good - better than he had since hitting his early forties. That made him remember his fight in the garage and the broken lightbulb.
"Honey! Check my back real quick!"
Tess looked at him with exasperation and continued checking the kids over.
"I'm serious! Here, look," he turned around and knelt in front of her, exposing the ripped hole in the back of his shirt limned in bloody tatters. Her eyebrows scrunched as she reached up and touched the perfectly smooth skin underneath.
"What happened here?"
"When I was fighting those spiders they threw me into the garage light! I forgot about it in the rush but I remember feeling the pain and blood running down my back. But it's fine now? I need to go look," he rushed out of the room towards the bathroom.
"Come on kids, let's go into the living room," she held their hands lightly and pulled them to their feet, leading them to the comfortable couches. She pulled the curtains closed just as Zavier came into the room with his hands out.
"Look at my hands! You remember the cuts I had on my hand from working on the car? They're gone!"
It was true they were gone, but Tess was skeptical. "You always have cuts on your hands somewhere, how do you know they haven't healed?"
"Like you said, I always have something! But look closer - even the scars are gone!"
Tess took his hand in hers and inspected it, flipping it over to look at the palm, then doing the same with the other. Then she went to Cass and inspected his knees for the skateboarding scars he had there.
Used to have there.
They all spent a few minutes looking over themselves, not seeing a single mark or scar anywhere on their bodies.
Zavier put his chin in his hand, pacing back and forth across the comfortably furnished room. "Well whatever happened seems to have been real, and not just to us. I don't know who that Mason guy is, which means he doesn't live near here. Then there was that one person without a name, whatever that means. I think what we need to figure out is how widespread this is."
"Everywhere," Luna said, showing her phone screen to them. She scrolled through TikTok videos, all of them talking about the event.
Cass was working his phone too and spoke without looking up. "Discord and Reddit too. Everyone is spamming the event."
"What does Facebook say?"
The twins shot Zavier looks of condescension teenagers reserved for their parents. "I don't know," Tess said, "I guess you could see what the old people are saying about it."
They spent the next half an hour poring through various social media and news sites to the same effect.
"It's everywhere," Tess's voice held a note of worry. "A lot of people died."
"That announcement said 5% of the population. We're at about 7.9 billion people, which means," Zavier's eyes unfocused for a second, "about 395 million people just died. Holy shit," he sat heavily into a chair and stared into the distance, hands steepled in front of his face.
Tess knew he was in planning mode and would only respond in grunts until he'd had a chance to run through all the possible scenarios he could think of. He'd come out of it soon enough, with an urgency to take immediate action. He had grown up in the kind of poor, latino neighborhood that they write movies about and had learned young that the only way to mitigate unexpected obstacles was to plan for all of them in advance, then rush out to meet them head on. He often joked he'd had to learn to fight because he hated running. It was metaphorical, his only fighting had been childhood scraps and fights from growing up in bad neighborhoods, but that mentality persisted into adulthood for him. If he saw a problem coming he just made sure it happened on his terms. Great for an engineer whose job it was to guide failing companies through the failure and into to their greatest potential, but hell for a family that had to be lectured frequently about every type of danger they could potentially find themselves in.
"So what did you guys see there?" Tess was still processing her own experience with The System. "Did you guys get notifications about stats and levels?"
"Here mom, I think I figured something out," Cass's eyes flicked back and forth for a second, then suddenly all of them could see his character sheet in front of them.
"Woah!" Luna jerked her head back at the sudden appearance.
"Yeah, I realized you could go through it like software. Look at an area and concentrate and, if it's a button, it'll work. But you can also just leave it there and let your mind drift for a second and you'll realize you already know how to use it. You don't have to learn it, you just kinda have to remember it. I just thought about all the different things it could do and then I knew what those things were. One of the options is that you can share it with other people."
The three of them sat there like that and, within a few seconds, Tess gasped in sudden understanding. She started quickly scrolling through the different menu screens, quickly skimming some areas and mentally bookmarking others for more in depth review later. She would be reading all of this later - there was never a contract she didn't read fully. Plus, she would need to give Zavier the details later. He was smart, but detailed reading of instruction manuals was not his thing. She was the one that read the medical paperwork, loan contracts, and return policies. He just signed and moved on, eyes glazing over after the first paragraph. For her it never sat right to agree to something that you didn't fully understand before signing. If Zavier was the car's engine, she was the navigation.
"Okay, I know what we need to do," Zavier said, eyes once again alert. He leaned forward in the chair and smiled. "But first, let me show you this cool thing I figured out!" He sent his screen to the others.
His smile slipped in confusion with the sighs and groans.
An hour later Zavier was in the kitchen cooking while the kids played on their phones. Cass had headphones on and Luna was spread across the couch on her back, head in Cass's lap while she scrolled through more TikTok videos. Tess had stressed to Zavier that there was time to discuss later, they all needed a little bit to decompress. He'd nodded and went to the kitchen to make everyone Sloppy Joe's. Not only was it easy, it would force them to put their phones down for a little bit to eat. His childhood had a lot of hungry nights, so Zavier knew the healing power of food and cooked the vast majority of the meals in their house. He not only loved the experimentation and fun of making meals, he loved nothing more than feeding his family. There was comfort in a favorite meal and eating it together. The kids played with their phones, the TV played in the background, but they always ate their meals in the same room. He'd make sure everyone was full, sometimes a little too full, then walk around and grab their plates and clean dinner up. Despite 20 years of him doing that, Tess thanked him every single time for grabbing her plate. He lived for Luna's "That was great dad, thanks!" as she skipped off. Cass rarely said anything, but that was Cass - they were lucky if he had his headphones off.
Cass and Luna were opposite sides of the same coin, yet couldn't be closer. Cass had always been a gentle soul while Luna was the bubbly socialite. When Cass was growing fidgety and irritable from too much physical contact or stimulation, Luna was there as his oasis. When Luna was heartbroken from her latest breakup, arguing with friends, or feeling less-than from getting a B on an assignment, Cass was there, head on her shoulder and holding her hand in his.
The meal done, Zavier walked around, stacking everyone's plates on one hand and gently touching their heads or the sides of their faces as he did. He was a lucky man and he never forgot it.