The first task reads:
View your mission board.
Ori looks at this. "I'm already looking at it."
The mission board is a separate interface layer. Say: open mission board.
"Open mission board," Ori says, feeling only partially ridiculous.
The primary mission text steps back and a new layer opens in front of it, wider and more structured, organized in columns that resolve from blurry to clear as he looks at them, the way vision adjusts to a new distance. The board has three sections: Active Missions, Completed Missions, and Locked Missions. Active Missions contains one item, the ten thousand follower primary mission, with a progress bar showing nine thousand four hundred and twelve out of ten thousand. Completed Missions is empty. Locked Missions is a long column of greyed-out entries he cannot read clearly from this distance.
He leans toward the locked column.
The entries sharpen slightly, enough to see that they are organized into categories: Music, Performance, Acting, Variety, Industry, Public Presence, and several others further down that he cannot make out. Each category contains multiple locked missions stacked vertically like floors in a building, the higher ones visible only as shapes above the readable ones.
It is, he thinks, a very tall building.
"How do I unlock these," he says.
Locked missions unlock progressively as preceding missions are completed. Some unlock in response to external events. Some unlock when specific skill thresholds are reached.
"Skills," Ori says. "What skills do I have."
Open skill tree.
"Open skill tree."
The mission board steps back. A new interface opens, and this one is different from the others in a way that Ori registers immediately, not in its structure, which is clean and organized like everything else, but in its current state, which is almost entirely empty. The skill tree is a branching diagram that fills the full width of the interface, dozens of nodes connected by lines that suggest relationships and progressions. Each node is labeled. Each node is grey.
Every single one.
He looks at the tree for a long moment, following the branches, reading the node labels where they are legible: Vocal Control, Stage Presence, Confidence, Lyrical Depth, Emotional Regulation, Character Analysis, Screen Presence. Dozens more. All grey. All locked.
At the bottom of the skill tree, below the last row of nodes, a single line of text:
Current Star Points: 0
"I need Star Points to unlock skills," he says.
Correct. Star Points are earned through mission and task completion.
"And I have zero."
Correct.
Ori looks at the empty tree. He looks at the locked missions. He looks at the single active mission with its progress bar sitting at nine thousand four hundred and twelve out of ten thousand. He thinks about the distance between where he is standing and the first node on any branch of the skill tree, the simplest and most accessible one, which requires Star Points he does not have, earned through tasks he has not yet completed.
He is, by every measurable metric the system can display, at zero.
He knows this is true. He knew it before the system showed it to him. But there is something about seeing it rendered visually, the entire empty tree with all its branches reaching toward things he cannot touch yet, that makes the zero feel different from how it felt as an abstract fact. More specific. More like a beginning and less like a lack.
"What is the first task," he says.
Your first task is already complete. You have viewed your mission board. Ten Star Points have been awarded.
A small animation: one of the nodes near the bottom of the tree, the most accessible one, labeled Basic Confidence Level 1, shifts from grey to a dim amber. Not unlocked. But closer.
First active task completed. Next task: leave your dormitory room today.
Ori looks at this.
"That's a task."
It is your current task, yes.
"Leaving my room is a task the system considers worth assigning."
All sustainable development begins with the most proximate available action. Leaving the room is the most proximate available action.
He reads this twice. He thinks about nine missed lectures. About two and a half weeks of the room being both shelter and container. About the way the most proximate available action had, for a period, been simply existing in the room and not doing anything further, and how the system has looked at this history and determined that the logical starting point is a door.
He is not offended by this.
He is, in a way he does not fully examine, grateful for the specificity of it. Not: fix everything. Not: become something. Leave the room. One door. One step into a corridor that smells of noodles and someone else's laundry.
"And if I do that," he says. "What comes after."
The next task will be visible once the current one is complete.
"One at a time."
One at a time.
Ori nods slowly. He looks at the skill tree, at the single amber node waiting at the bottom of its branch. Basic Confidence Level 1. He looks at the mission board with its locked columns and its tall building of things he cannot access yet. He looks at the primary mission, nine thousand four hundred and twelve out of ten thousand.
"One more question," he says.
Available.
"Why me. Not why am I eligible. Why me, specifically. What is it about this particular person in this particular room that the system decided to bind itself to."
The interface is quiet for longer than it has been quiet before. Long enough that Ori wonders if the question exceeds the system's response parameters, if it is the kind of question that gets returned unanswered because the answer is outside the available information.
Then:
That question will answer itself. Complete enough tasks and the answer will be visible in what you become.
Ori sits with this.
He reads it again.
It is not a satisfying answer. It is not the kind of answer that closes a question. It is the kind that moves the question to a different location, further along a road, past a horizon he cannot currently see.
But it is, he thinks, an honest answer.
He stands up. He picks up his jacket from the back of the chair. He crosses the room. He puts his hand on the door handle.
He opens the door.
The corridor smells exactly as it always smells. The bicycle is still there against the wall. The door three rooms down opens as he steps out and a student he vaguely recognizes emerges carrying a textbook and does not look at Ori, simply moves toward the stairwell with the forward momentum of someone who has a morning to get to.
The interface chimes softly.
Task complete. Ten Star Points awarded. Basic Confidence Level 1: Unlocked.
The amber node in the skill tree brightens to gold.
Ori stands in the corridor and looks at the bicycle and breathes the corridor air and the morning is entirely ordinary and something in it is entirely not.