Anwan stared out the window and ate her breakfast as she complained about going to school. The babies sat on either side of her and drank their milk as I drove for a while and every once in a while, Anwan would complain when one of the boys stole a bite of her lunch.
"Rory stop it!" She said upset as he snatched a piece and grinned. I pulled into the parking lot and got out to unbuckle the boys.
The system screen had a few notifications pop up and block my view as I opened the car door. I let out a sigh. Was this a blessing sent from the Gods? Or was this a curse?
I did not know.
Anwan finished her plate and set it to the side and my hp points went from 200/200 to 150/200 immediately. A notification popped up:
[Motivation points have been decreased, you have no desire to clean the car, -50Mp.]
Then under it another notification:
[Energy points have been decreased, -50hp]
I noticed that my Mp and my HP had both gone from 200/200 to 150/200.
What is HP and MP? I hadn't really played a VMMR game before. I don't know what VMMR means, something about being immersed in it? Well it was more like VR right? Where it's immersed in me?
"Gaaaa!!!!" I exclaimed, which made Anwan startle. "Sorry." I muttered.
I looked at the screen in my vision again. Ok so HP is energy. MP is my motivation.
I had never heard of that. Shouldn't it be magic points? I had heard of video games before, I may be a nube but I am not totally ignorant.
It seemed like everything had a base of 200. A little icon for each category showed up next to my profile picture: an image taken of me apparently when I got the system, and it was a look of surprise on my face. I frowned as I noticed that. Stupid system. There has to be a way to change it. I hope so.
"Mom, what are you doing?" Anwan asked me impatiently, pulling me back to the task at hand.
I laughed, "I'll have to worry about this system stuff later." Grabbing the boys on each hip, I walked them all into the school. Anwan slung her backpack over her shoulder and waved goodbye and she went inside.
Excitement bubbled up inside of me. I got a determined face. "Alright boys! Let's do this."
————-
About an hour later, the sounds of Bing! Bing!Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Followed by +10+5+10+10+10+1+1+ rang out as I tackled the house.
I had found that this game rewarded me for any task I did. Godsystem my butt. This is a participation system. My kind of game. Making my ADHD world more interesting one task at a time.
[Congratulations! You have been logged in today for 120 minutes today, +100 experience points!]
Had I already been cleaning for two hours? I looked at the clock and it was 1:30pm. I frowned. I had to go to work in three hours and I hadn't enjoyed my day very much.
At least I will clean at work too and get some points from that. I closed out the notification by swiping it away. Experience points was a new category. Actually, because I was expecting all of my points categories to have a max of 200, I was pleased to find that this new category, EXP was 850/1000. It had reached 950/1000 with my daily log-in bonus. I smiled, well I know I have cleaning experience. This game should be a piece of cake. But it still didn't make me like cleaning.
I looked around my living room and gave a sigh. Sometimes it is hard to know where to start. "System? Can you help a girl out?" But it didn't seem like the kind of system that spoke to a person. I didn't really have a goal. I think I'll just clean the stuff I normally start with. When in doubt, I pick one area. That, or I clean what I prefer to clean first. Usually I start with dishes because it is always necessary to do the dishes. Hmmm…. Yeah dishes sound good. I had done some dishes before dropping Anwan off to school, but now as I made my way around the house, a significant number of dishes had been added to the sink.
The pros of cleaning something you like to clean first:
1) Instant motivation boost
2)small victories
3)visible progress
4) joy when I find something I was looking for
5) gets me in the mood to clean
Yes, I have a few areas that are my favorite go- to spots to clean and those were the reasons why, but I have to be careful, I decided. I felt my energy depleating and with it the motivation. Normally I would just leave the job half done when I run out of energy, but this system had me curious what kinds of prizes I would get.
I headed for the dishes then. To my shock, there were more dishes than I had even remembered. Where did they all come from?
It was as if I had bought dishes that weren't even mine. Then dirtied them.
I looked around. Had someone dumped their dishes on me?
I pictured the god of chaos, Loki, giddy because him and his wife now had a maid. This made me frown.
(She didn't know how accurate that was. Loki was literally dumping his sink full on her. Sigyn his wife was doing a face palm. Oh my goodness.)
I searched my screen to find the notification that I had finished the dishes a few hours ago, and it was there, in the kitchen tab:
[Congratulations on completing task: dishes! +20 MP] my motivation points had gone up to 170/200 when I finished cleaning them.
But then I squinted, next to the notification was a countdown.
[Time until respawn: Respawn complete]
RESPAWN ????? I would have to clean things twice? How often would things respawn? At what rate? Was this a phenomenon that already happened? Or was the system going to make it happen? How unfair!!!!!!
I looked at all of the completed tasks:
[Congratulations on completing task: Fold the laundry- time until respawn: respawn complete.] as if by clockwork, the dryer finished running.
[Optional quest: Fold the laundry. Time until next respawn: 24 hrs]
"what!!!!???" I was so mad at what I was seeing.
[Congratulations on completing task: sweep the twins' room. Time until respawn: Reapawn complete.] a crash was heard upstairs as the boys delved into their box of cars.
[New quest: Clean the boy's room. Time to complete quest: 3hrs]
[Congratulations on completing task: take out the trash. Time until respawn: respawn complete.]
I went to the kitchen and sure enough, the garbage I took out this morning had filled enough to not shut all of the way.
[New quest! Take out the trash! Time to complete quest: quest must be completed before any other quests may resume.
It was as if I had never touched the tasks. This system was rigged. Who had made it??! The God of Chaos?
I groaned. If this was how this game was going to go, why was I even playing it? What did I hope to gain by it?
My EXP, my MP, and my HP were all more or less unchanged. With every respawn it seemed like the points I had gained by doing the task had been taken away. With each completion adding around 20 points for example and then each respawn taking away 20.
I clenched my fists. Then I was going to work harder.