Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Bay Fall

I walked into the apartment building with a groan. 6 flights of stairs every single time. 108 stairs going up and 108 stairs coming back down. Twice a day, every day since the elevator was broken, I had to make this trek. The only good news was that I could feel the muscles in my calves getting huge. If I kept this up, I was going to look like a mountain climber. Reynold already looked like one, but he looked like that before the stair issue.

The elevator was just one in a long string of early tech failures. For one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world, we sure were having a massive amount of problems. A lot of the electric-powered trams would just die on a moments notice. They had to do whatever system reboot they had to do every time. People stopped taking the public services due to their unreliability. Additionally, cell phones and computers started dying randomly all over the city. Hell, if you believe the fear mongers on the news, then this was happening all over the country and caused by the CIA or Russia or some shit like that.

I carried my bags of groceries that I had to pay cash for, due to their credit card machine being down, up that Mt. Everest of stairs before reaching my front door. With both arms full, I managed to carefully lower my hand to the door knob and twist it. Damn it…it was locked. I sighed and put down the bags on one arm to grab my keys. No sooner had I retrieved the keys from the jacket and placed the tip to the lock when the door swung open.

Reynold stood there with a smirk. “Why’s the food on the floor, Ty?”

I rolled my eyes. “Screw you, dude. Let me in.”

He held his hands up in mock surrender and let me in. “News is going crazy. Apparently the pentagon network shut down today. The whole building lost power. Senators are voting for a full investigation.”

I laughed. “They’ve been voting for a full investigation all month.”

Reynold shrugged and took out the eggs and coffee creamer to put in the fridge. “The gas station give you any trouble?”

“Not really. I’m out of cash though.”

Reynold nodded. “Not sure where we’re going to get more. The bank ATMs are closed until further notice. Apparently some people had pressed the withdraw button, power went out, they lost money. Something like that.”

I rubbed the back of my head. “Wasn’t there a TV show about all the electricity going out or something?”

“Yeah, but it got canceled after a season or two.”

“What do you think we’ll do if the power goes out?”

Reynold then proceeded to debrief me on his 100,000 word pre-planned dossier on exactly what our plan was that he held since he was 3 months old. Jokes aside, the guy had it pretty well thought out. 

You are reading story Shifters in San Diego: A LitRPG Saga at novel35.com

I looked at the clock. It was 4 am. I had work in about 14 hours. Reynold was leaving for his job now. “Did you sleep?”

Reynold made a joking glance back to the array of coffee cups spread out over the table and the TV News Channel that was incredibly loud. “Yep. I sure did.”

I loved my brother, but he was a dick sometimes. “Sleep when you get home.”

“Who’s going to make sure that you get up for work then?”

I laughed and strolled off to bed. By bed, of course, I mean the pull out couch I slept on. We had made a deal that whoever paid most of the $3,200 rent got the single bedroom. The other one got the pull out couch. I worked at a Jack in the Box while Reynold work as a low-level finance consultant. Hell, he was the main reason I was still out here. 

A few years ago, when I was 18, I left home after a pretty big fight with my dad. I didn’t know where to go, but I knew Reynold lived in San Diego. I headed here and I’ve been crashing with him ever since. He makes off-handed jokes about me being a burden, but I’m pretty sure he’s glad for the company. Reynold was going a little crazy the last few years with the stress of his job. He hadn’t slept well since he got it.

I sat on the bed, hearing the creaks of the broken springs before turning my attention to the TV. “I’m Katherine Hope and this my cohost…”

The bald man on the right smiled. “…Doug Walters.”

“And we are here to bring you your news for October 1st, 2049. Let’s start with the investigation into recent power outages across the United States. Government sources, along with social media, have determined that this is a world wide problem. Across the globe, cities are facing increasing amounts of random power shortages. As those issues become present in self-contained electric systems, like cell phones, scientists are hard at work to determine the cause.”

“Dr. Armando Dalton, a scientist from Texas Tech University with a doctorate in Advanced Energy Systems, has described the phenomenon as possibly an unknown side effect of Helium Batteries. When questioned on why these issues are present in systems that were built before 2038, Dr. Dalton stated that the interaction could have created a form of electric virus. In response to critics who said the idea was ridiculous and ‘not at all how electricity works’, Dr. Dalton stated: ‘I don’t see you coming up with any better ideas.’”

I laid back on my pillow and tried to fall asleep. If I didn’t go to sleep soon, the sun would come up and I’d then be struggling with bright lights filling my living room. The worst part about living with an insomniac is that they have a tendency to convert you to their hours as well. I checked over both of my alarm clocks once again. The odds of me sleeping for more than  14 hours in a sitting were astronomically low, but it had happened before. Maybe the odds weren’t as low as I thought. I set another few five minute interval alarms on my phone and rolled over.
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I opened my eyes with a yawn. As I did, a blue text box floated in front of my face.

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