At work, Evelyn worked on a cake and began looking at the order form and then looked up ideas on her phone for pictures and things.
"Ooo this one." She said. "She began to work on icing it and her mind drifted to when she was done how she would have dirty dishes to wash and hoped to find more ways at work to level up Is every mundane thing I do secretly life-or-death? What if brushing my teeth levels me up to combat plague bacteria? What if I floss wrong and set off the apocalypse?!"
Once the whole thing was coated, she smoothed it. She put texture on the sides and then began stenciling lace on the side.
She pressed the stencil onto the cake now that the frosting had crusted and then slathered some frosting on, and smoothed it out. Then she airbrushed the whole thing black.
When she finished, the cake was black with some black lace. Nice. She said and began to look up ideas for Lambeth designs.
She piped some frills here and there and then got out her electric stove and blender. In went the rice paper and she mixed it with black food coloring and water.
If the system was watching her, then it didn't know what was coming because she pulsed the blender and then began making little sheets of paper out of the liquid, this time it was kind of crinkly and black and Lacey.
Home made edible tulle.
This was Evelyn's secret technique and her co-workers worked busily on bread while occasionally glancing over as she made quick, careful work at covering the other tier with tulle like a dress.
The boys nodded in approval. "Evie that's so cool!" One of them commented. He was new, his name was Aksel. He was very muscly and evie smiled to herself at his compliment.
She didn't turn red per se. In fact, she was married to Michael so her and Aksel didn't have romantic intentions, but they got along right away and she was pleased.
"Thank you!" She said as she finished the dress.
Then she poked the cake with wooden dowels and measured them before removing them to cut them to length.
She put them back and left the center one long for support.
Then she carefully stacked the cakes and began placing an edible image of a character from a gothic movie. She put more tulle on the top of the second tier and placed some black roses as well.
[congratulations: system update to level 10. ]
Evelyn nearly fell over. Level 10?!!!! Just for making a cake? Should I just hand out cupcakes to save humanity? This cannot be how it goes! How does this have to do with the system and why so many points for a cake?
"I'm not ready for the apocalypse, and how does making a cake get me to level 10?" She exclaimed out loud.
Aksel and the other boys looked up from their work again and raised their eyebrows.
"I don't think that the purpose is to prepare for an apocalypse," one of the other boys said. He wiped away sweat from his face and then washed his hands before resuming kneading the dough. "The point is to make money."
"Yeah what are you all going on about?" The third boy said to Evelyn.
She got embarrassed. "Oh nothing, just…. What I do at home is a lot more work and here is more rewarding so what do I do about that?"
Evelyn referred to leveling up, not the joys or disappointments of her life but Aksel slammed the dough down and began working it. "What I do at home is crap." He said. "I go home and I slave away at my second job, but one day I will surpass my brother and won't that be more rewarding than money? Here I am making muscles. He slammed the dough down again as if he were really training for combat and this job was just a cover for that. He kneaded it some more.
(This isn't karate kid, I the narrator thought, though it is a movie that wouldn't come out for centuries, I would have laughed at the reference now if Evelyn and the boys knew about it.)
Evelyn thought about it. "I do have goals at home too—it's just so much work. Here, I can master this skill so much easier. At home, I'm trying to master stuff I'm not good at, and… we still don't have any forks."
The fourth coworker laughed. "You people are funny talking about goals. I'm just here to make money, go home, and watch TV. Life's simple."
Aksel chuckled, slamming the dough down dramatically. "Hal, you're a legend. Teach us your ways."
"Legend of the Couch," Dean the second man quipped, cutting pizza crusts. The rhythmic slam-slam of dough cutters filled the room.
"And yet, somehow, you're the happiest one here. Teach us your ways." The third man said. His name was Austin. He began cutting out pizza crusts and the slamming of the cutters over the dough ended the conversation.
Then the boys began to talk about girls. Evelyn laughed. This place of work for her was actually very nice. It was nice to work with such friendly people and everyone had depression like her, which meant thru trauma bonded too and that was a rarity at a workplace.
She would never leave. Would this job prevent the apocalypse? She wondered. Are the skills I need to learn to stop the apocalypse included in learning more about this job than just my responsibilities? She thought about taking an interest in other people's lives and that sounded nice.
"Never learn to do stuff you don't want to do. Unless you want to have to do it forever." The advice of her very first co-worker came to her mind. "Teresa your words of wisdom just make you miserable." She decided. "Let's do this!"
The boys looked up at her exclaimation. "I think I'm ready to learn how to do everything!"