Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 2 (Patreon)

I sat there on the little barren patch of ground that was all that remained of the place where the three strange Amazonian women had once lived. Nearly an hour passed by the time I was sure that they were truly gone.

I had never believed in the supernatural before. Still, with irrefutable evidence right in front of my eyes, I couldn't deny that I had seen something inexplicable by any ordinary understanding of the world.

But there was one explanation that came to mind. Now that I had seen something spectacular with my own eyes I could only believe in the impossible. Those three women really were aliens from an alternate dimension.

That thought alone would be terrifying enough. But I had something far greater weighing on my mind now. The Amazons had said Earth was going to be destroyed, integrated, and that I might not survive the process. Not without the token I was currently holding, at least.

I held the thing up to the light.

It was a little coin-shaped token made of a material I couldn't identify. It shimmered in the light, and the alien symbols that adorned its surface caught my eye. These were no decorations but words from another world.

I returned home in a daze, uncertain of what to do with my life now that I knew what I knew. My friends were already gaming around a tabletop when I made it back, but I wasn't in the mood to join them.

"Hey, Carter! Guess what? Your wizard finally didn't get his dick stuck in a tree while you were gone."

I let out a long sigh. "Let me guess. He got it stuck in a wagon instead?"

"No, he — wait? How do you know!"

I went up to my room, feigning illness. I had too much to do to waste any time.

As soon as I was back at my desk, I pulled every scrap of paper for my printer is I could grab and start furiously writing everything. I remember down.

What I know about the integration:

• it will be an apocalyptic calamity for earth
• Most people will die.
• Monsters will attack.
• A system will be involved (more research required?)
• Surviving will require growing stronger in the eyes of the system.
• The Amazonian Empire will be observing and may get involved.

What I can do to prepare:

• Learn how to survive in the wilderness.
• Prepare food and supplies.
• Train with various weapons.
• Scout out a fortified location to make my new home base.

I grimaced as I realized how small the list of things I could do to prepare was. I debated adding 'recruit others' to the list of things I could do, but I knew that as things stood, I would sound like a madman to anyone I tried to recruit.

People were always screaming about an incoming apocalypse or alien visitors. No one ever believed them. I was wise enough to know that they would think the same of me.

A quick search online told me that my local university offered a survival course, and I quickly switched out my elective for the next semester. After that, food and supplies would only be a matter of acquiring money.

There was also a boxing and fencing club. I had seen those Amazon women practicing both. I didn't think they were training that way just for sport from the way they went about it. I wanted to have at least a layman's understanding of both skills, so I sent emails to both clubs.

After cashing in my final tip from those Amazonian women and pulling it with the others, they had given me throughout the summer, I've managed to stash away around twenty-five thousand dollars. That wasn't life-changing, but it could be life-saving if spent right.

Before, I intended to use that to cut down some of my student loans. But if the world were going to hell, I would rather have food and weapons than a better credit score.

I remembered what the blonde back then said one day about firearms. My first instinct upon learning that the world might come to an end was to buy as many guns as possible. But she'd said firearms stopped working as soon as the apocalypse began.

But she had mentioned that simpler weapons could work. That was why she and her companions trained so much with swords and other primitive weapons. Still, she'd suggested that primitive guns could work, and I imagined I'd been better with a blunderbuss than I'd be with a sword.

To cover my bases, I bought a few replica flintlock pistols off the Internet. They sold most of them with the barrels filled in with wax to make them legal to ship, but that was easy enough to strip out. They wouldn't be as good as a modern gone, but modern guns wouldn't work. These things would be a lot better than sticks and stones.

***

I hardly noticed is my senior year of college passed. My grades for my last semester suffered a bit with my mind on other things, but I still managed to land a tech job at one of the small businesses associated with my school. The owner's daughter came by herself to recruit new talent. She was an alumnus of my same department, having graduated just a year ago.

"Hello there, Carter Smith. My name is Regina Tsuya, and you'll be working under me. I expect 110% out of you at all times!"

Regina waved her arms as she spoke, going to red in the face as she enthusiastically gesticulated.

"All I can promise is my best."

One year turned into two, and two turned into three. I took up hiking as a hobby and started scouring the local mountainside. During my travels, I spotted a few good caves. There is even a small Valley they could be walled off. It wasn't large enough to have the crops to feed more than a dozen people, but it was survivable and defensible.

Between that and the occasional morning jog, I was in far better shape than a desk jockey had any right to be. I was still no Olympic athlete, couldn't see without my glasses, they couldn't hold a fencing saber for the life of me.

I consoled myself with the thought that I would survive through my wits instead of through physical strength. I had always preferred playing the wizard over the barbarian. I was more prepared than I had any right to be.

Things in my day job, unfortunately, we're not going anywhere near as well as I would've liked. The more I fortified myself, and the longer I stared at the token the Amazons had given me, the less I cared about it. What was the point of trying to get a promotion? Of trying to advance in the company? It would all be gone when the integration came, whenever that would be.

Until then, my job was just a way to support myself and gather resources. Nothing more. While my peers started putting their money into the stock market and retirement accounts, I bought musket balls, gunpowder, Steel Swords, and armor plate.

When the world ended, and the battle for earth truly began, I would be ready.

***

Soon, my home became a menagerie of medieval weapons. I trained with most of them at least once. Unfortunately, I never attained the speed or skill the Amazons had. Partially that was because I was practicing on my own without a training partner. But by now, I could hold all of them and hit a target without hurting myself.

That was more than most people would get when the integration came.

Work was getting more complex, and Regina, who was still my boss years later, made things increasingly challenging for me.

"Carter!" Regina yelled, bending over my desk as she slammed her hands down. She leaned halfway over until she nearly pressed her nose to mine and stared me in the eyes with such intensity it would've been sexual if she wasn't scowling. "You are late with your weekly report!"

"I'm just finishing it up now," I explained as I quickly tabbed out of the list of new supplies. I plan to purchase for my hidden mountain bunker.

Regina turned to look at my screen and grumbled. "It was due five minutes ago."

"I'll stay late and finish it if I need to." I sighed. Regina could be a handful.

There was a rumor that her father had wanted to sell the business back when he first came down with cancer. He didn't because Regina showed up in his office and told her that she could improve profit margins by twenty percent across the board if she was running the company. After giving her a month to do it, she'd done just that. Her father had gotten his treatment, though he'd sadly passed just after, bestowing the family legacy on Regina's shoulders who managed the company better than ever.

Regina was terribly hard on herself. She worked seven days a week and I never saw her outside of the office for anything. Unfortunately for everyone else in the office, she expected all others to work hard as well.

I ended up not being near as far along with my report as planned, so I had to stay two hours past when everyone but the janitorial staff went home lest I face Regina's wrath all weekend.

"Took you long enough," Regina appeared behind me like some corporate specter mere seconds after I submitted my report to her email inbox. She was staring at her tablet while she spoke, already reading it over.

"It's a Friday, Regina. Shouldn't you be at home relaxing?" I asked her. "You should have set yourself up with a mansion with all your big boss woman money."

"I live in the same apartment I had in college." She flipped to the next page of my report, and I winced as she scowled at something. I'd caught one of my coworkers writing a sexy novel at work one time too many to cover for them. "And I don't pay myself a salary any larger than yours. That money can be reinvested into growing the company, after all."

"Shouldn't you be going on a date or something, though?" I raised an eyebrow teasingly. "This is a family-owned company, after all. That could hurt the bottom line in a few decades if it isn't dealt with now."

"So far, I've told every man I've met online to get lost. They all end up being slackers. Perhaps you've been spending your weekends giving lessons." For a moment, Regina's lips quirked up into a tiny smile before she quickly quashed back to professionalism.

"Maybe my boss doesn't see my true potential. Or perhaps I missed my true calling."

"Yes, you've proven quite dedicated to researching alien abductions and encounters with mostly naked muscular women. I know you disabled my screen share software, so I set up a camera in your cubical," Regina replied.

"This little thing?" I said as I picked up a pinhole camera I'd spotted days ago.

Regina pointed to a speck woven into the back of my chair with a delicate hand. Then she pointed up to the ceiling, where I noticed something attached to the sprinkler that wasn't usually there.

"Those are two of thirteen," Regina explained. "I cannot promote you to manager unless your productivity numbers increase by twenty percent. So you will work harder from now on."

"...Right." If I didn't know Regina as well as I did by now, I would have been a bit disturbed by how intently she was staring at me.

"If your output increases to the 98'th percentile of employees, I will consider allowing you to create company heirs."

I laughed at that. Regina didn't have the most incredible sense of humor, but they were a kicker when she did drop a joke.

"That's one hell of a corporate benefit, Regina! Maybe I'll work harder after all. Want me to walk you to your car?"

"You may, but first, I need to stop by my office to print off your report so I can review it over the weekend."

I followed Regina back to her office as she pressed something on her tablet. I heard the printer behind her doors sputter to life as Regina commanded it to print, but the noise abruptly guttered out.

World integration initialized. Welcome to the Ten Thousand Worlds.

Now injecting raw zeal across aspects.

Warning: Side effects may include random monster spawns or accidental race changes. Do not panic. Only the weak will perish, and all system-induced changes will be beneficial to those who survive.

I stumbled backward as the message flashed across my face, steadying myself against the door for a moment. The message faded a mere instant later, just long enough for me to look it over once. Many people would have thought it simply a hallucination.

But I knew it was time.

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