Chapter 0: Strange Meetings
One expects to see strange things in the woods after leaving the trails behind, but perhaps not 'alien with picnic basket' strange.
Hiking on thoroughly marked trails is boring; the ground is curated, tended, all traces of wildness carefully swept away with a factory broom by the constant reminders of 'civilization' in the form of trail markings, foot bridges, and other humans. What should be communion with nature becomes a pale and bloodless shadow that does nothing to recharge the batteries after a hard week's work. No, the only way to hike is to leave the trails behind as quickly as possible.
The Asquagonick National Forest is 2,000 square miles of wilderness preserve with a dozen miles of hiking trails nibbling at the edges. If you started at the eastern parking lot and spent three or four hours worth of sweat and shoe leather it was possible to get to a hilltop from which you could look out across vast swaths of trees but couldn't see or hear any trace of civilization, including planes overhead. There wasn't even cell reception, although that mattered less when you didn't bring your phone with you in the first place.
There were surprises everywhere when you hiked like this, if you paid attention to your surroundings. Birds, brown and red and grey, nesting in hidden crevices far above the ground. The faint rasp of a snake moving off at the sound of your footsteps. Claw marks on the trees where a bear had climbed up in the course of its morning constitutional. The oddly pleasant stench of skunk weed in a marshy low-lying area, and a minute farther on the sweetness of honeysuckle.
Granted, all of those surprises fell within certain bounds. Catching sight of a rare bird? Absolutely. Breaking out of the tree line to find a wide river with three otters playing grab-ass on the bank? No worries.
Finding a clearing full of gopher holes, blackberry bushes, and a space alien with scones and clotted cream? That was a smidge outside the bounds of the plausible, yet here you were.
"Hello?" you called, uncertainly. The alien looked exactly like what movies and TV had led you to expect: chest high on you, sallow grey skin, stick-thin limbs and body, and a big oval head with enormous black eyes. Three fingers and two mutually opposed thumbs, which was not per the standard media depiction, but that was minor. He (she? it?
Go with 'they', you thought) was sitting cross-legged on a white-and-red checkered blanket with an honest to god wicker picnic basket next to it. Two mugs sat next to a bone china teapot that steamed on a small trivet. There was a baker's three-layered display stand filled with scones, cookies, muffins, and various jams and spreads and butter. A generous bowl of fruit was laid out for you; the local ant population was sending cautious scouting missions after the fruit, but the alien kept brushing them away.
"Ah, finally!" the alien said, waving you over. "I've been waiting. Sit, sit. Have some scones, or croissants. Don't worry, I don't bite." They opened their tiny and toothless mouth wide, emitting a series of clicking buzzes that were maybe their equivalent of laughter or maybe curses and mockery in an unearthly language. No way to tell.
You studied the alien for a moment, then looked around the clearing. No spaceship, and also no camera crew waiting to jump out and say "Punked! Haha, this will be worth a million views!" Knee-high grass and a few bushes here and there. The sounds of small wildlife, probably voles and shrews, moving quietly about their little lives in the grass. And an alien. Or maybe a hallucination? You couldn't think of any reason you'd be hallucinating, but that did seem a lot more likely than discovering that extraterrestrials existed and they liked blackberry jam on their croissants. Maybe you'd gotten in a car accident on the way to the trail and you were currently lying in a hospital bed?
Somehow, you couldn't bring yourself to believe that. Thinking about hallucinations was what a sensible, intelligent, rational person was supposed to do in remarkable situations like this, but you couldn't hide from yourself; you were only considering the idea because that's what you were supposed to do. In truth, you believed that this was really happening.
Slowly, you moved forward and settled on the blanket opposite the alien. It stared expectantly until you took a plate and a croissant. The croissant was warm and flaky and buttery. The alien's mouth widened out into a fat oval that hopefully was their equivalent of a smile.
"So..." you said. "Alien."
"Indeed! I'm sure this is a bit of a shock, but don't worry. I come in peace." They raised one hand, fingers and thumbs pressed tightly together. "Take me to your leader," they intoned solemnly, before breaking down into more of those clicking buzzes. "That's a joke. I don't actually intend to talk to anyone but you."
"Oh." You paused, considering which of your billion questions should come first. Your brain was having trouble sorting them. "What should I call you?"
"Ah, yes, names, of course." The alien cleared their throat. "Let's go with 'Marjorie'. I like that name and my current reproductive role is close enough to your concept of female that we might as well go with it. I know how much importance you humans place on knowing the details of each other's genitals." They—no, she—nodded seriously.
"Uh...right. Nice to meet you, Marjorie. Why exactly are you here?" This situation, while undoubtedly real, was also completely surreal. It was making it hard to frame a conversation.
"I am a member of the Belanian University Psychology Department," she explained. "We're doing a study, 'Strategies for Productive Information Sharing Under Emergency Conditions'. The goal is to identify ways that professionals in stressful environments—emergency workers, disaster repair technicians, that kind of thing—can convey information quickly to civilians in order to elicit positive and organized action."
"...What?"
"I'm sure you've seen it here on Earth. Whenever there's an emergency situation, many people act counter to their own interests. What they
should do is go to the safety locations that the emergency workers are directing them to, or move away from the oncoming storm, or what have you. Instead, they freeze up, break down, become combative, or take some other non-productive action. We're experimenting with different strategies for conveying information that will help people get through those non-productive reactions as quickly as possible so that they can then move on to productive action."
A cold hand wrapped itself around the pit of your stomach. It didn't yet start to squeeze, it simply let you know that it was there.
"And why are you doing it here?"
"Oh, the Ethics Board," she said, waving one hand dismissively. "We can't very well engineer dangerous emergency situations in order to test our theories, now can we? Fortunately, the Crawl provides an excellent opportunity. We know about it well in advance and there's exabytes of data available already. We can take our time locating ideal candidates, plan our approach, and then follow up afterwards. Plus, all the locals are already nanochipped and don't have standing in the courts, so we can gather first-person data without worrying about privacy laws. And once the crawl per se starts we have panoptic viewing to observe outcomes." She clasped her hands. "It's so exciting!"
"Wait, what? What is the 'Crawl'? And did you just say that I've got some kind of chip inside me? And—"
"Yes, yes," Marjorie said, waving a thin hand dismissively. "Don't worry, I'm about to explain all that. Why don't you eat your croissant before it gets cold?"
You looked down in dull surprise. On one hand, the world was feeling off-kilter and unreal. On the other hand, you were suddenly aware that it was well past time for lunch and you actually
were hungry. Plus, the croissant looked and smelled amazing. You tore a piece off and sampled it; it was absolute heaven. Jam was unnecessary and Nutella would have been sacrilege.
Marjorie watched your reaction with approval for a moment, then spoke. "Dungeon Crawler World is what you would call a reality television show. The audience is small, only a few octillion people, but it's an extremely dedicated fanbase and some of the fans are quite wealthy, or even heads of state. It runs on planets that have been resource optioned—"
"Wait, 'resource optioned'?" You could feel your eyebrows go up at that clearly-a-euphemism term.
"Yes. You know, strip mined for their valuable elements, that sort of thing." She pulled a small tablet computer out of thin air, made a note, and pushed it back into thin air where it promptly disappeared. "I told Kevin that his 'soft ramp' strategy wasn't going to work," she said, sounding satisfied. "Leads to the subject focusing on all the wrong things. All right, switching tacks: a week from today your world is going to be collected. That means all structures will be sucked down into the ground and the people inside them killed. There's nothing you can do to prevent this, so the question is how you are going to prepare for it."
Things were getting more surreal by the moment. Somehow, it all felt far away. "Wait, what? Everyone will be killed?"
"Yes. Well, not everyone. Only the people who are inside at 2:23am. This timezone, obviously. It will be daylight in large parts of Asia, so there will likely be two, perhaps three hundred million survivors worldwide."
What.
"Now, whenever a collection occurs, galactic law requires that the inhabitants be given an opportunity to reclaim their world. The Borant Corporation are the ones with the rights to Earth and they have chosen the 18-level Dungeon Crawl option. All human survivors from the collection will be given the opportunity to go down into the dungeon and fight their way to the bottom. If you exit the eighteenth floor then control of Earth will revert to you and all galactic presence will be removed from the planet.
"I'm talking to you about it because our profiles indicate that you are the type of person who will choose to go into the dungeon instead of attempting to survive on the surface after the power and communication grids are eliminated, all shelter and production capacity has been destroyed, and the vast majority of tools, medicines, and stored food are eliminated.
"You will have a week to prepare for this. I suggest bringing weapons and other items that will help you in combat situations; the dungeon is teeming with hostile monsters, since the entire point of Dungeon Crawler World is for the fans to see you in exciting and dangerous situations."
"Wait, but—"
"Bup! There will be 150,000 stairwells leading into the dungeon, and half as many on each floor down. Each level will be open for a certain amount of time—five days for the first floor, increasing for each successive floor. When the timer runs out, the floor will collapse and anyone still on it will die. You need to find a staircase down to the next level and descend before the collapse or
you will die." She conjured a piece of paper from nowhere and laid it in front of you. You glanced down dully; it was a high-detail map of downtown with a square box drawn in the middle of Elm Street on the 400 block. The marked area spanned the road from side to side and an arrow indicated which way the steps would lead. "This is the precise location where the nearest stairwell will appear. Remember, 2:23am, one week from today.
"You can bring whatever you like into the dungeon and you don't need to worry about carrying capacity. This season Borant has chosen to provide all crawlers with altspace storage; anything that you can lift off the ground for about four seconds can be placed in your inventory, just like I did with my datapad a moment ago." She conjured and vanished the device again to make the point. "Items in your inventory are time-locked, so food will remain fresh, etc etc. Items can be pulled out into your hands with just a thought.
"Now, the inventory system isn't enabled until you get into a dungeon and find a game guide. You'll need to account for that. If you bring more than you can conveniently carry then you'll need to think about how to transport it to the stairwell; the dungeon opens after the collection and during the collection any vehicle with a top on it will be sucked down. You can transport things using a convertible so long as you leave the top down and remove the trunk lid. Alternatively, you could use a tractor with a flatbed trailer, or that sort of thing. Don't use that Nissan Altima of yours or the vehicle and all its contents will be vanished, and you too if you're in it at the time.
"You may feel free to bring food and medical supplies, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. There will be saferooms available that provide food and places to sleep, and there are bathrooms scattered liberally about. As to medicine, when you enter the dungeon you will be immediately cured of minor ailments such as diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, and if you are taking any sort of ongoing medicine regime then you won't need to take it from then on. You will also acquire a passive regeneration effect that will fix minor injuries—basically, your natural healing is sped up quite a lot. Scrapes and bruises will be gone in a few hours, broken arms will heal in a couple of weeks, and so on. It won't regenerate missing limbs, eyes, that sort of thing, but otherwise you're fine. 'Magic' healing will be available as well which can deal with injuries much more quickly."
"Excuse me, 'magic'?"
"Yes, that's what it will seem like to you. It's really just advanced technology...I believe one of your kind had a phrase about advanced technology seeming like magic to primitives?"
Rude.
"Anyway, you'll acquire 'magic' of various other kinds as well. Health potions will heal your injuries instantly, shoes might grant the ability to walk on walls or teleport short distances. You'll find spellbooks that will allow you to 'cast spells' to attack, defend, and so on. Too many options to mention, but assume that if you can imagine it then it will likely be available somewhere in the dungeon. You may or may not gain access to it, but it's probably in there.
"Finally, communication devices will be disabled in the dungeon but also aren't necessary. There will be a chat system that allows mental communication to anyone in your party and anyone with whom you have bumped fists."
She fell silent, watching for your reaction. For your part, you ate the croissant and waited for your numb brain to unjam itself.
"You're really going to kill seven billion people just so you can do your thesis experiment?" you ask at last. The cold grip on your belly was turning hot, a churning acid that threatened to spill forth and send you leaping across the blanket at her.
"Oh, not I. No, the Crawl is happening no matter what I do or don't do. My colleagues and I are simply taking advantage of the opportunity. It's quite exciting, honestly—our research could end up saving so many lives that your language has difficulty describing it!" She paused. "And, now that we're past the initial part of the briefing, I can tell you that the vast majority of people won't actually die in the collection. Yes, a few hundred thousand will be killed because at the moment of collection they were sticking their head out a window, or they had their legs under a vehicle to work on it, or what have you. Those people will be cut in half and will bleed out.
"As to the rest...so long as their brain is collected, they have a chance of surviving. They will be placed in storage until the crawl ends. A handful of them may be repurposed to be mobs or NPCs in the dungeon, in which case they could actually die, but that's exceedingly rare. Perhaps a dozen or two across the entire duration of an average crawl." She shrugged.
"If I die, will
I be placed in storage?"
"Oh, no. Crawlers die for real. Also, once the crawl ends everyone who was collected is usually recycled, although some may be retained for use in future crawls if they have particularly interesting skills or personalities."
"By 'recycled' I assume you mean 'murdered'?" The words were hot and tight, the desire to claw out those massive eyes rising.
"I'm here to give you the best chance to save them," she said, ignoring the question. "You need to focus. Essentially the entire human race is depending on you. If you can make it through the crawl then all of the collected people can be restored. Billions of lives depend on how you prepare over the next week and what you do when you are in the dungeon. Now, would you like some tea?"
You stared blankly at her. She raised the teapot inquiringly and you numbly held out your mug. She filled it and you absently took a sip. Once again, it was perfect. Annoyingly so; how was it that a murderous alien could provide better tea and croissants than decent humans?
"Are you going to give me any proof of this?" you asked. "How do I know you're not full of it?"
Marjorie cocked her giant head. "What reason would I have to lie to you?"
"I dunno. Maybe your thesis is really something like 'Strategies for Pranking People from Low-Tech Worlds'. Or maybe you're just a troll."
"Neither, I fear. I'm sure you would prefer to find me a liar, but I'm afraid that I simply am not. Everything I've told you is true."
"Do you have any evidence? Like that datapad. If you give me that thing, I can show it to people to convince them."
Marjorie shook her head firmly. "Absolutely not. That would compromise the experiment by introducing external elements. No, you'll need to convince people on your own merits."
You found yourself wishing that you had brought your phone. A short and surreptitious video recording would go a long way towards making this plausible.
She glanced up at the sky for a moment. "Oh, bother, there's my ride. Let's see...I've given you the precise time and location where the stairwell will open...ah, yes." She waved her long fingers left to right. "There. I've set a countdown timer on your phone—yes, yes, the one that's in your car back in the parking lot. It's counting down to the precise second that the stairs will open. Don't lose that map that I gave you. It's to scale and it's got GPS coordinates at the bottom just in case you need to use a navigation system. What else...? I told you about the fighting, and the medicine, food, bathrooms, inventory...yes, that covers it. Good luck!"
"Wait, I—"
It was too late; Marjorie was gone between one syllable and the next, leaving you with nothing but a picnic, the quiet songs of courting birds, and seven days to prepare for the apocalypse.
Welcome to Dungeon Crawler You! You will play as a human, Taylor, who chooses to go down into the dungeon in an attempt to rescue Earth from disaster. This is, obviously, a fanfic of Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Knowledge of DCC canon will mostly but not always line up.
This quest uses approval voting, so you may vote for as many options as you like. There are several things to vote on; see the next post for details.
