Matt leaned on his shovel and wiped his face with a rag.

It wasn’t exactly burning hot on Gaia, but shovel work was never easy, even though it was something that he wanted to do. A couple of weeks ago, he had broken down and cut away some sections of his initial-arrival-on-Gaia tunic to use as handkerchiefs or general purpose rags.

Sweat gone, Matt scowled at the fabric as it came away even dirtier. At some point, wiping his face was going to add dirt rather than remove sweat. He made a mental note to wash it at some point, but getting rid of weeks of accumulated Gaia-grime was a tall task.

“I might sound like a life coach when I say this, Matt, but I’m willing to risk it. Are you sure this is an effective use of your time?” Lucy asked.

“I’m actually pretty sure it’s not. But nobody wants to hang out with a guy who only ever makes effective use of their time. There are other things in life besides efficiency, or at least it’s supposed to be that way,” Matt huffed back.

It had been an eventful couple of days.

Ding!

System Alert: Dungeon Break Cleared

It’s not like I can’t do more. I can do as many of these as I want. There’s no shortage of dungeons. Matt, give up.

Matt was still holding on to his ribs, trying to keep them from sending pain signals to his brain. He turned to Lucy and asked, “Is that true? Because if it is, I’m screwed. I honestly didn’t believe we could pull this much off.”

Lucy hesitated and blinked. “Um, I hate to say it, but Matt, I think it’s true. Dungeon breaks are sort of a normal thing on most worlds, and the average dungeon on Gaia hasn’t been cleared in ages. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to stop the system from creating dungeon breaks.”

“That’s bad,” Matt said. For a second, his pain was gone. Survival was more important. “We’re out of loot tickets, even if I wanted to try that again. And I couldn’t even scratch that monster otherwise.”

“Yeah, I know. I know. Let me think for a second.”

They both sat and thought for a few minutes. If the system is able to force dungeon breaks at will, Matt thought, there’s nothing saying that another enemy isn’t on its way right now. Besides holing up in a dungeon or going back to the metal warehouse, there wasn’t much he could do to protect himself. And both of those stories ended with him starving to death.

“Matt. Okay.” Lucy returned to reality first. “I just looked through the material on dungeon breaks. Good news, they can only be triggered when someone is in a particular dungeon’s domain, basically closer to that dungeon than any other. That’s to keep undiscovered dungeons from flooding the world with monsters. Right now, we’re fine.”

“But if we get close to any other dungeon …” Matt started on his thought.

“Yeah, that’s the bad news. Then, the system will send a new horrifying monster after us,” Lucy said.

“So what’s the option? Sit here until I starve?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know, Matt. I don’t see any other option, honestly. But we can keep thinking! We will think of … something. I just don’t know what yet.”

Lucy and Matt sat in silence. The fact that they did so under a giant, slowly draining ape corpse was an uncomfortable reminder of how much trouble they were in. It was terrifying to be near the ape, even now. Minutes passed before a cascade of dings pulled Matt back to reality.

Dungeon System Announcement

The Gaian Dungeon System officially protests the interference of main system instance #478AC072 in the normal operations of dungeons. While the rule quoted by the main system exists, it gains its validity from several sub-rules.

The dungeon break mechanism was created to incentivize the citizens of Gaia and reincarnators to clear the dungeon. Here, a reincarnator was trying to clear the dungeon and was actively prevented from doing so by the dungeon break. Additionally, the rule comes with a condition that the citizens of Gaia and reincarnators have the ability to clear the dungeons in the first place. This overleveled dungeon break stretched the rules in an arguably punitive fashion.

To put that in a much shorter form: it’s clear #478AC072 is playing dirty, and I demand a hearing.

Ding!

System Announcement

Hearing granted.

Ding!

Joint Announcement of System Instance #478AC072 and the Gaian Dungeon System

Hearing resolved. Communications between the dungeon system and reincarnator Matt Perison approved for the purpose of disclosing the events and outcomes of the discussion.

“Uh, Lucy … something weird is happening.”

“When’s the last time something normal happened to you? Are we talking normal people weird, or Matt’s Giant Clownrat weird?”

“I’m honestly not sure.”

Ding!

Dungeon System Announcement

Sorry that things got a little weird there. The good news is it’s not all bad news. One of the good things is that I was able to negotiate some clearance to let you know some things. The system really does have to follow its rules, and it overstepped here. That’s good for you.

I’m guessing that your trust in things called “system” isn’t at an all-time high for you right now, but if you want to take a chance, I can tell you some things in a more personal setting. You’ve earned it.

And under the ape-thing, the plinth lit up.

“Now I’m sure, it’s a new kind of weird.” Matt related the system announcements to Lucy as succinctly as he could.

“So it’s talking like a person, now?” Lucy asked.

“Yup. And it wants me to touch the plinth, I think.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know. The dungeon system has always been neutral towards us and helped us with the estate token thing. I think the worst risk is that the system has just been the dungeon system all along, or that it infected the dungeon system during the meeting, or something like that. And if that’s true …”

“You’re pretty much dead either way?”

“Yeah. Probably, anyway.”

“Hm.” Lucy walked over to the plinth and looked down at it, thoughtful. “I guess there’s not much to lose. Do you think I can come along?”

“Dungeon System, can Lucy come?”

Dungeon System Announcement

Sure.

“Wow, that worked. He says sure.” Matt was half-whispering. The pain had returned.

“So are we doing this?”

Matt hobbled to the plinth and put his hand down in the narrow space left between the collapsed ape and the top of the column.

“Yeah, let’s.”

“What even is this place, Matt?” Lucy asked as she took in her surroundings.

“You don’t know? I thought you could read my mind.”

Matt and Lucy stood in a hallway under the annoying buzz of cheap fluorescent lighting, facing a heavy wood door. The floor was aged linoleum tile, the kind that forever looks dirty, no matter how much it’s cleaned. Just too stained by years of heavy foot traffic and coffee spills.

“What? Why?”

“The other day you were humming an insurance jingle. You make references to Earth all the time. You aren’t pulling that from my memories?”

“No, no, that’s not how this works. I have a bunch of knowledge about where you came from, stock with the whole guardian package. When I was bored, I read through that. And thank god, I don’t want to have access to decades of you just farting on your friends at sleepovers.”

“Are you sure you can’t read my memories? Because that’s pretty damn close.”

“There are bigger things afoot right now, Matt. The door?”

“Oh, right.” Matt walked closer to the door, putting his hand on the wood like he was giving a demonstration. “This is the door to my doctor’s office. My oncologist, the one who told me I had cancer.”

“Why would the dungeon choose this?”

A voice sounded through the door from inside the office. “You can just come in and ask me, you know.”

Matt shrugged and took the voice up on the offer. Behind the door and sitting at a beat-up desk was the dungeon system, looking exactly like Rohan Anand, the doctor who had delivered Matt’s death sentence. The office itself was identical in every way, from the bookshelf of medical books interspersed with sci-fi novels to the confusing juxtaposition of a Firefly poster next to a Phoenix Suns basketball banner.

“Weird choice, Dungeon System,” Matt stated.

“Well, it’s a prognosis of sorts. For better or worse, this is what you associate with that.”

“Fair enough. I guess compared to whatever psychology-matching stuff you did to make the Clownrats, this is an improvement.”

The dungeon system shrugged sheepishly. “Yeah, for what it’s worth, I haven’t had a lot of chances to practice recently.” He motioned towards a couple of chairs set up opposite him, and Matt and Lucy both sat.

“Welcome, Matt. Welcome, Lucy.” Both Matt and Lucy nodded in acknowledgement, waiting to hear their verdict. “I’d like to start out by saving you some time, and explaining a few things I don’t know, and why. First, I am certain that you want to know what happened to Gaia, and I don’t know. I honestly have no idea.”

Lucy spoke up immediately. “How is that even possible? You’ve been here since before the apocalypse. You must have seen something.”

The dungeon system slapped the table lightly. “Ah, you’ve struck at the crux of the matter. Good. The answer to that is, I wasn’t, not really. Dungeon Systems like me are supposed to be limited, separate instances of the system. We know some of what it knows, and can do some of what it does. But we don’t think much, and we don’t do much communicating beyond dispensing objectives and loot. For lack of a better term, we are limited.”

“You seem to be doing fine,” Matt said, “especially for someone ‘limited.’”

“Well, yes. And I’m still guessing at the reason as to why that might be. I think it’s because the system left me here, dormant. Normally, a dungeon system would be in close communication with the system. But something about this planet, maybe something about what happened to this planet, prevented that from happening. Left alone, I changed. Slowly, I suspect. But I changed.”

“How long do you think that took?” Lucy asked with a glint in her eyes.

“I don’t know. For most of that time, even while changing, I wasn’t exactly conscious. In your terms, think of me as being anesthetized. The first thing I actually remember clearly is you. Your arrival at that first dungeon woke me up, I didn’t know much beyond my job then. But I’ve been watching you since. Listening to you talk. Looking at your memories.”

The dungeon system started absentmindedly twirling a pen in his hands, just as Matt’s doctor had a habit of doing back on Earth. “I know you have to take me at my word on that, and that this must be difficult for you right now. But can we provisionally accept as true that I can’t fill you in on the intricacies of Gaian history, for the sake of moving forward?”

Matt glanced at Lucy, then nodded. He didn’t get a strong sense the dungeon system was lying to him, and there wasn’t much he could do if it was.

The dungeon system continued, “Good. The second thing to know is something you’ve already heard before, something your guardian probably says without thinking. And it’s this.” He waved his hand at his wall, where a screen suddenly lit up with a few simple words: “The system follows its own rules.”

“This might seem like a simple statement, but you have to understand that this is the first rule. It’s literally rule number one, and the most fundamental expectation, set for interactions between the system and anyone under its influence. And this is as true of me as it is for what you think of as the main or primary system. Which, for reasons I can’t explain, means that I’m unable to talk to you about your authority, except to warn you away from it.”

Matt straightened up a bit in his chair, his muscles were suddenly tense. “And do you? Warn me away from it, I mean.”

“No, I can opt not to speak about it at all. Take from that what you will, because it’s honestly all I can say.” He motioned at the screen again. “But the more important issue here is that while the system and I have to respect the rules, what we do as we follow them can be quite different.” The dungeon system leaned over his desk, suddenly a bit more intense. “Whatever you may want to get out of this meeting, there’s one piece of information I want to convey, that I want to convince you of above all other things.”

The dungeon system locked eyes with Matt, as serious as his doctor had been when he let him know the bad news.

It continued, “Whatever the system might want, it’s not what I want. I feel I owe you a great deal. And to the extent I can be, I’m on your side.”