"Holy sh*t! This tastes like heaven!!" I practically yelled, the words muffled by the massive bite of the sandwich I was currently demolishing.
I was completely overwhelmed; the flavours were an explosion of salt, fat, and savoury richness that bore no resemblance to anything I had ever consumed in my entire life. In my time, "meat" was usually a gristly, unidentifiable paste or a dried-out strip of monster jerky. This was a revelation.
"Don't be silly," Isabella laughed, clearly amused by my melodramatic reaction. She shook her head, her brown hair catching the sunlight. "Don't tell me they don't have burgers wherever it is you came from."
"There are things called burgers... but they never taste like this," I replied, choosing the first plausible answer that surfaced in my mind. I couldn't exactly tell her that the cows of her era had been replaced by mutated, two-headed beasts that tasted like sulfur and despair.
"Then where exactly are you from? You still haven't given me a straight answer about that!" she pushed, her curiosity returning with a vengeance.
"I came from far, far away," I said, my voice dropping as I focused on the burger. I didn't want to lie more than necessary, but the truth was a one-way ticket to an asylum. "Listen, shouldn't we head back and grab a few more? Just for the road?"
We were already making our way toward the Great Lawn, the vast heart of the park.
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Burgers are always going to be there. We can get another one whenever you want." She found my urgency funny, a quirk of a hungry traveller. She had no way of knowing that the supply chain of the entire planet was about to snap like a brittle twig. She didn't realise this was likely the last real meal she would ever have.
"C'mon, just one more! Please!" I pleaded. I was genuinely ready to beg. It wasn't just the taste; it was the calories. I knew the starvation that was coming. However, she seemed to interpret my desperation as a charming bit of gluttony.
"Stop it! Fine, I'll buy you one more sandwich, so just chill out," she said, though she paused to point a finger at me. "But don't forget, I'm the one paying, so you owe me big time later."
When we had purchased the first round, I'd been forced to let her pay. I had arrived in this era with absolutely nothing. Even if I had brought the coins from my own time, they would be useless here.
This society was still operating on a system of "worthless papers" as currency. I still couldn't wrap my head around how billions of people had been convinced by such a transparent trick.
To me, paper was something you used to start a fire on a cold night or to use in the toilet. True value lay in gold, precious ores, or even functional artefacts. But money? In two hours, the contents of every bank vault in New York would be less valuable than a single clean bottle of water.
As we walked, we encountered another street cart. I couldn't get enough. My stomach felt like a bottomless pit, driven by a primal urge to fuel up before the world ended. I felt a sudden, sharp surge of hatred toward the apocalypse—and toward that old man. Why couldn't he have sent me back a week earlier? A year? I could have lived like a king in this paradise.
"What time is it now?" I asked as the wide, open expanse of the Great Lawn finally came into view.
The scene was hauntingly beautiful. Families were spread out across the grass, basking in the afternoon sun. I watched children running through the fields, their laughter mingling with the wind as they chased colourful kites. It was a sight I had never witnessed in person.
In my time, children were burdened with the same soul-crushing survival instincts as adults. The apocalypse made no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, the young or the old. It was a merciless world that stood in total opposition to the peace these people took for granted.
"Why are you so obsessed with the time?" Isabella asked. This was the third or fourth time I had pressed her on it. She was starting to get suspicious, but I couldn't help it. I didn't want to get lost in the bliss of a burger and miss the moment the sky tore open. Being in the centre of this open lawn was strategically vital.
"It's four P.M.," she finally said, checking her phone.
"We need to pick up the pace," I said, stuffing the last of my precious burger into my mouth. I started walking with a hurried, predatory stride. Isabella was startled, remaining motionless for several long moments before jogging to catch up.
"What's the rush? The meeting isn't for hours!" she complained.
I couldn't give her the real answer. Not yet. I reached the centre of the Great Lawn and stopped, looking around at the trees, the skyline, and the happy people. I felt like a man saying a final farewell to a dream.
"It looks too good to be true," I whispered.
"Why are you acting so—"
Before she could finish her sentence, the world shifted.
The vibrant, blue sky began to dim with an unnatural speed, as if a giant shroud were being pulled across the sun. The temperature plummeted in seconds, and a low, subsonic rumble began to vibrate through the soles of my shoes. All around the park, the laughter died. Kites fell from the sky. Thousands of people stopped in their tracks, their heads tilting upward in unison.
"What's going on?" Isabella's voice was small, trembling with a fear she hadn't felt in years. "Is it an earthquake?"
I knew it wasn't. Earthquakes didn't turn the sun into a pale, sickly ghost. This was the one event that both the official records and the old man's stories agreed upon. The "Great Devouring" had begun. The sun was being eclipsed by a celestial anomaly—a "dark star" that brought the first wave of the apocalypse. Within a week, the sun would vanish entirely, and the age of monsters would begin.
Gravity itself was beginning to change, growing thicker and more oppressive with every passing second. The very concept of day and night, as the billions of people on this planet understood it, was about to be irrevocably shattered.
The rotation of the Earth was slowing, destined to elongate the length of a single day by double, while the planet prepared for the violent, tectonic process of merging with alien worlds from across the cosmos.
Rumble!
As the sky continued to bruise into a deep, sickly purple, a colossal and terrifying shadow loomed overhead, blotting out the remaining light. It's here, I thought, sucking in a sharp, cold breath. Even having heard the descriptions a thousand times, nothing could have prepared me for the sight of this epic, reality-warping phenomenon. It was a sight that defied human vocabulary.
"Is that… a spaceship?" Isabella whispered, her voice trembling as she searched for a rational explanation for the void in the sky. I didn't bother to correct her.
At this precise moment in history, humanity was drowning in a sea of desperate theories: alien invasions, the biblical rapture, solar flares, World War III, or even the onset of Ragnarok. Each theory held a microscopic grain of the truth, but none could grasp the sheer, multidimensional scale of the catastrophe.
Flash!
Flash!
Flash!
It has already arrived. I squinted as a shimmering, golden screen materialised in the air directly in front of my eyes. I couldn't see the screens of those around me, but the collective gasp from the thousands of people in the Great Lawn told me the phenomenon was global. It was the birth of the new era—the first appearance of the soul-bound Systems.
[Congratulations! As a human being, you now have a chance to exceed mortal boundaries and become a mighty figure of your own race. The era of your civilisation has ended. A new experience awaits you.]
It was the infamous introductory message, a text I had memorised by heart during my years as a Classless nobody. However, as the old man's warnings rang in my ears, I found myself scowling at the screen. Comparing the System's grand declarations to the actual events that were about to unfold made my blood boil.
The message was magnificent in its presentation but suspiciously hollow in its content. It lacked every piece of vital information a species would need to survive.
It didn't mention the imminent planetary merger; it didn't warn us that we were being dropped into a multi-racial meat grinder; it didn't even use the word "apocalypse." It left humanity in a state of total, paralysed disarray at the most critical moment in our history.
Lacking these seemingly trivial details wasn't a minor oversight—it was a death sentence. Watching the panicked, hollowed-out expressions of the people around me, I realised for the first time how calculated this silence was.
According to the old man, this was only the first entry in a long list of crucial data points withheld from humanity to ensure our failure. Knowledge was the only true power in the universe, and we were being kept in the dark by design.
"Did you… Did you see that?" Isabella asked, pointing a shaking finger at the empty air where her screen hung. Her face was the colour of ash.
"I believe something world-altering is happening," I replied, forcing myself to play the part of a confused contemporary. I didn't want to look suspicious, so I adopted a tone of hurried concern. "You have a phone, right? Check the news! See if the government has released a statement."
"Right! Yes!" She was jolted into action, fumbling with her bag before pulling out her smartphone. She glanced up at the darkened sky once more before taking a deep breath and tapping frantically at the screen.
I knew she would find nothing but a black mirror. One of the first strikes of the apocalypse was the systematic neutralisation of all human technology. It happened in the opening seconds of the transition.
"What the hell… it isn't responding! The screen won't even turn on!" She sounded more terrified of her dead phone than the darkening sky. To these people, technology was their primary sense; without it, they were blind.
"Let me see," I said, acting the part of the helpful stranger as I took the useless device from her. I knew the "Great Devouring" was accompanied by a worldwide electromagnetic pulse on a scale that shouldn't be physically possible. It rendered every circuit, every satellite, and every power grid on Earth permanently inert. "Is the battery dead?"
"No way! It was at eighty percent less than a minute ago!" she cried, her voice rising in pitch. I decided to stop talking and let her process the frustration.
All around us, the Great Lawn had become a theatre of the absurd. People were shaking their phones, screaming at their tablets, and looking toward the horizon where the city's lights should have been flickering on.
The sun was now a mere ember, making it difficult to see more than a hundred yards away. I knew that soon, the crowds would begin to converge out of a primal need for safety in numbers—and that would lead to the next horrific step.
Suddenly, a new notification pinged in my mind, the text glowing with a sinister, crimson hue.
[Quest 1 has been issued.]
[Part 1 of Quest 1: Survive for the next sixty minutes.][Reward: System Integration and Official Recognition.][Penalty: Death.]
What the fck?!* I couldn't stop the curse from echoing in my head.