Chapter 7: Chapter 4: Do not get it twisted

[User, the System highly recommends not taking this action.]

"What's the matter?" John asked it mockingly, "You can't do it?"

Tilting his head as if in deep thought, he reminded the System of its poorly worded quest: "All it said was that I needed to claim a piece of land, and I've done just that."

[The User is currently using semantics rather than proper reasoning, it is in your best interest that you listen to the System's warning; you will regret this decision!]

"Semantics, huh?" He thought with a sneer, "That's an awfully big word for a system that denies his host the rightful completion of a quest."

[...]

John sat on the bed and tapped his fingers together as he waited for the system's response.

[Action Denied: Not enough space for the facility.]

"Objection!" John thought while pointing at a wall, mentally picturing that the System was in front of him.

"Unless someone else owns the mining rights to the land under my property, which is doubtful given the building's likely proximity to a major city," he smugly reasoned, waving his hand erratically to continue, "then I can legally claim the ground below as a facet of my property as long as I do not intrude on another owner's land."

Unaware that his thoughts had become a soliloquy, John rambled on: "Furthermore, the federal government has stated before that the property owner is entitled to upwards of 500 feet of airspace above their land before it falls under the control of the state."

The man continued to seemingly speak to himself, saying, "I believe there is enough space to create a facility within these guidelines," unaware that the innocence exuded by the statement was offset by both his current uncanny resemblance to a famous fictional cat and the fact that he was completely nude.

[...]

[Does User confirm the current land selection as the location to construct their first facility?]

[Yes]
[No]

Grinning at the system's naivety, John selected the first option with zero hesitation. His expression changed to one of confusion as the system panel brought him back to the main menu, even moreso when one of the previously locked options was now revealed.

________
[Status]
[Missions]
[Management]
[LOCKED]
[LOCKED]
________

He chose the recently unlocked option, causing a brand new menu panel to appear.

________
[Construction]
[Research]
[Staff]
________

John clicked the first option, as he chose to ignore the others at this moment.

Immediately confronted with a large blue panel, he felt overwhelmed while scrolling through the dizzying array of options available. There were a plethora of building options, from something as obvious as "cantina hall" to whatever the hell a "spatial simulation chamber" was needed for. He cycled through the never-ending list, occasionally clicking on stuff to get a more detailed panel, only to be cockblocked by the error prompts: "missing requirement" or "insufficient tokens."

Feeling a migraine brewing, he asked the system to filter the results to only show what he needed at the moment. John watched as the seemingly endless options dwindled to just two after the system wordlessly followed his order:

[Main Facility Headquarters: FREE]

[Basic Containment Chamber: 50AT]

Given the choice, he obviously gravitated toward the option labeled "free."

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Main Facility Headquarters]

The primary facility of the Foundation and your first step into the unknown

This facility is equipped with:
x2 complimentary [basic desk-office]
x1 complimentary [basic research station]
x1 complimentary [basic containment chamber]
x1 complimentary [beverage dispensary] *refills not included*
x1 complimentary [snack dispensary] *refills not included*

[Build] (Price: FREE)

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Just as John was about to click the "build" option, he abruptly stopped as he had an idea.

"Hey System, I don't want the free stuff," he thought as he looked around the options.

"Can you put it in like an inventory or something, so I can use it later?"

[They are part of the bund-]

The annoying man interrupted the system's logical statement as he whined, "Yeah, which means they belong to me, and I currently don't want to use them."

[Though User's reasoning is flawed, there does not seem to be any issue with this request.]

After a faint chime went off in his head, the following prompt appeared:

[New-feature added: Inventory]

He grinned at the sight and started to warm up to the System a bit.

"You know," he thought seriously, "you aren't too bad."

[...]

Ignoring its iconic ellipses, John continued talking to the system in his head.

"You and I are like business partners in this world."

[Business partners?]

"I'm the brains, and you're the uh," he paused for a moment, struggling to find a label for the unresponsive system.

"You're like the, uh... mascot?"

[User should begin construction]

John interpreted this message as some kind of passive aggression and tried to defend his statement.

"Hey, hey, hey, don't underestimate the power of a mascot!" John began posing, which was a clear indication that someone was about to be subjected to a long-winded monologue.

*Five minutes passed*

"-Mr. Clean, Michelin Man, The Pillsbury Fucking Doughboy!" John said, with his hand over his face like some half-rate anime villain.

He asked the system a few rhetorical questions: "Can you think about frosted flakes without picturing the iconic orange and black striped tiger?" and "When I say an Irish creature draped in green with a penchant for brown pellets sprinkled with marshmallows, don't you see the image clearly?"

Chuckling to himself, the delusional man shouted in his head, "Clearly, a good mascot is almost fundamental to a corporation's long-term success!"

Letting out a sigh, the man took a much-needed breather after his rage (against the machine).

[The System will re-consider its previous thoughts after ruminating on the aforementioned feedback.]

"I'm glad we could come to an agreement," he thought with a smile.

[User should begin construction]

You are reading story Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) at novel35.com

He slapped his head and thought, "Oh right, I totally forgot about that."

Glancing at the display in front of him, he promptly selected [build].

[Beginning construction of: Main Facility Headquarters]

The naked man suddenly leaped back in shock—the scene reminiscent of a caveman who just discovered fire. The reason for this exaggerated reaction was that something appeared in his "actual" vision. Well, he wasn't sure; it could still be part of the overlay. But unlike the overlay, this object was not stuck to his vision, as in, it would leave his sight if he looked away from it.

The object in question was the familiar logo of the foundation. It glowed the same neon color as the rest of the system and bobbed up and down a few inches on a predetermined timer. Along with this, the object rotated a full 360 degrees after about what seemed like two seconds. John couldn't be sure of the exact time that passed between cycles since he didn't have a stopwatch or anything to measure it with.

While it didn't act like the regular overlay, it still had some resemblance to it, as the logo would always appear flat, no matter what angle he was looking at it from. Beneath the logo was a line of text that also moved up and down, though it didn't spin, thankfully.

The text read:

[ETA: 2 weeks]

John glanced at the number and felt his heart stop. He quickly pulled the previous tab back up, thinking there was some kind of issue.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Owned

[Main Facility Headquarters] - UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Available

[basic containment chamber] - Price: 50 AT

(results currently filtered)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He glanced at the panel and noticed he could click the building name even though it was "under construction." The result left his mouth agape as the bane of all management-sim gamers appeared before his very eyes.

Immediately, John revoked all of the positive will he had toward the system.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Main Facility Headquarters]

The primary facility of the Foundation and your first step into the unknown.

Under Construction: This item is currently under construction and cannot be used until it has been built.

Estimated construction duration: 2 weeks

[Use x1 [hume gem] to build instantly.]

Hint: You can speed up the construction time by delivering usable materials needed by the system to the focus point.

Hint: You can obtain usable materials through a recycler, though the results and efficiency vary between models. [View Recycler Options]

Hint: Some materials can only be acquired through a blueprint (created via research).

Hint: Some materials can only be crafted at their specified station.

Materials suitable to speed up the current build: [N/A]- Materials exceed Users' current [Crafting] capabilities.

Material speed completion bonus: 0%

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"What is the explanation for this?" John asked with a blank expression.

[Clarification is needed to generate a proper response to User's question.]

"System," John's face began twitching as he provided "clarification,"  "why does it require two weeks, and what is all this extra bullshit?"

[In response to User's first question: The User seems to misunderstand the difficulty in materializing objects through reality alteration.]

Just as John was about to retort, he recalled the PDF-like memory injection the system gave him a while ago. He found himself startled again due to how easy it was to browse through this information. He could pick any random piece of knowledge about the facility and vividly recollect every aspect, even down to the tiniest detail.

Amazed at this newfound ability, he immediately attempted to replicate the process with his normal memories, but the results were disappointing.

Not even mentioning his previous world's memories, which were inaccessible to him, his memories of this world were foggy at best. He was having trouble even remembering the events of his first day here. It was arbitrary what stood out to him; occasionally he'd recall something entirely different while attempting to focus on something specific; it was like random-access memory.

It appeared he was constrained by his deteriorating hippocampus. Of course, this may be owing to his low sanity level, but he wasn't even sure exactly how this metric was calculated or how it affected him.

As to why he could bring up random information while having a verbal exchange? He wasn't doing it on purpose. For some reason he could manifest anything he had in his memory-bank, but the condition was that it had to be used to fuck with someone. Like a bull-shit savant he could bring up a random topic and speak at length about it, but if asked to explain it again, he would draw a blank.

Chiding himself for losing his train of thought again, he went back to searching for information on what the system just said. However, he wasn't left with many results.

"System, there is too little information on this topic," he said internally, as he contemplated the little bits and pieces he could find on the subject. Apparently it was a "measurement of reality," which got its name from some ancient philosopher. Not particularly interested in the history of the word, John tried to isolate the pieces of information that only described what they did.

He was left with nothing but random, context-lacking excerpts showing up in his mental data bank. Left with no other choice due to the System's silence, he stitched together all of the excerpts to try and derive his own definition of the subject.

The following analogy is what he came up with:

The universe is like a videogame, and anomalies are bugs that appear randomly. The anomalies corrupt the data around them simply by existing. This data is the hume level, and when the data is corrupted enough, it causes things to break down. You don't want a level that is too high or too low; balance is the key.

Unfortunately, that was all he had to go on, so he might be wrong. He couldn't even find anything on how to go about measuring with this new unit or how the baseline was determined. What was the default level of reality, and how did the SCP people know it? The system's only response to his inner turmoil was:

[User can find this answer through the completion of research.]

Thinking, "Ugh, whatever." with an eyeroll, John realized the system was still as useless as he had previously thought. Thankfully, the system seemed to just ignore his grumbling this time and didn't do the whole "calculating" bit. He wasn't sure if he had the energy necessary to argue with it at the moment, as he glanced at the camera in the room.

In the end, it looked like he would still have to rely on himself to get out of this place.

Yawning, John had decided he was done scheming for the day. He thought about messing with Jemma again, but then stopped when he recalled something he had forgotten.

"Right!" he thought excitedly, as he wasn't completely out of answers yet.

"System, I want to receive my completion rewards."

[They have already been transferred to User's inventory.]

"Oh, right," he had forgotten about that.

He pulled up the inventory screen using his thoughts and scanned over what he currently possessed:

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