James Drewer was a rather ordinary student in college. With short black hair, aged sixteen and glasses, he was someone who wanted to work with computers. He was hoping to one day be a game programmer. His interests were decidedly nerdy, so he didn’t really have any friends... even among other nerds. He was a loner… but for the most part all he did was play video games, trying to discover secrets in them that others had yet to discover. As a student he was quite bright. He rarely engaged in class though, being reserved and reading a book or doing all that was ‘expected’ of him by teachers. Socially awkward and fearful of ‘conflicts’ he stayed away from almost everyone. An awkward, lonely teenager though probably not the ‘only one’… but still it did feel that way to him.
He lived with his parents, a mom and dad as an only child. So home life was kind of dull as well growing up. His extended family were abroad and speak a language he had limited experience with.
James still wanted to ‘make’ friends… but… he wasn’t all to sure how. Birthday parties tended to be going to the cinema to see a latest movie to himself. A while ago a few rumours spread about him being ‘weird’ and he just stayed away from it avoiding the fight and conflict. For the most part this cemented his ‘weirdness’ status and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
James was easily bored when it came to academics. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do any of the work assigned to him. He was very bright, augmenting working with Q-net and the Alien internet. The problem was his teachers tended to find out he was accessing the alien internet and gave a reduced grade. That everyone else used AI software didn’t seem to cause quite as much of a commotion.
The alien internet fascinated James. It was... first contact to a race of aliens… ‘all’ the aliens up there. All with their own language, cultures… all accessible on their devices now to chat with- if one could establish contact though for the most part aliens were just not that interested in talking to Earth or humans.
People persisted… people tried… they would access everything they could using every tool to access their Quantum Internet. special ‘pinging’ code system to find addresses by use of random numbers to ‘hit’ the various websites. These experts were known as Net-Divers. Experts who would find and translate websites for useful exchanges with Earth.
James wanted to be a net-diver as well. He had familiarised himself with the known parts of the Alien Internet, accessing the amazon-like software very often. Like most people on Earth, James had an account with them and his room was littered with various ‘interesting’ appliances or weird gimmicks.
The problem was in ‘buying’ these items. When a person made an account, they were usually given ten credits as a freebie. Ten credits did not buy very much on the alien website, perhaps a book in an alien language, a weird mug that changed colour depending on the mood of the holder, a talking doll that could easily be made on Earth, but there were far more interesting items that were just outside the range of any normal buyer, costing hundreds to millions or even billions of credits. Most people on Earth stuck with the free ten credits, got one item, and left it at that…
James stared at the computer screen, a picture of something that looked a lot like a sunbed. Strange rays of light coming out of a crystal underneath the setup. “Healatron… heals all injuries… a million credits?!” James looked at various other wonderous items one could buy. “Class 1 shuttle… Light speed… one billion credits”. The slowest one available… two seats and a bathroom. “Jeez…”
He looked at his account, which stood at 37.6 credits. It took him almost three years to get that! Ironicly the greatest he got was 20 credits for a poem he wrote and gave to the aliens… but they didn’t accept any further works of art form him. He had tried precious metals, but that didn’t work. His mother suggested an old family recipe which ‘did’ give them five more credits…
Some people tried to game the system by creating multiple accounts. A stern Q-mail would be received, and access revoked depending on how serious ‘they’ took the offence.
There was no easy way to convert human currency into credits, although material goods ‘could’ be accepted by some smaller sites. Direct transfer of credits between owners didn’t seem to be possible no matter how much people tried to pool them.
A bar of gold might give a few credits… people assumed they were being scammed and thus didn’t bother sending more though it was just as plausible gold was of no value to the interstellar market. A few people ‘did’ get more credits publishing a story on Alien Amazon though, perhaps ten credits a month.
Some stumbled onto alien gambling sites to increase their credits by pure luck… and others have found an alien stock market to invest in but with no knowledge of interstellar finance most just lost money. A few very ‘lucky’ people managed to get more accessible items such as a ‘replicator’ for food production, costing about 5000 credits which appeared to be the limit of what most humans could ever hope. This was done with some serious luck on the gambling websites as well as winning actual ‘prizes’ from various banners.
...but nobody had found a way to ‘earn’ credits… by providing some kind of ‘work’ of the kind that the aliens might actually want to pay out for. Earth just didn’t have anything of value to them and the aliens were not around to ‘negotiate’ access to their market or wonderous technology. Many governments were trying but none succeeded.
To James it was infuriating. Why grow up and do a mundane job on Earth when there was technology out there that could bend or even ‘break’ the very laws of physics? To walk on alien worlds… and see amazing things. Things that nobody has ever seen or done! That… that was the job he wanted… to become a space pilot, commanding one of these ships… exploring the universe. There was so much technology being promised and Earth couldn’t even get a single scrap of it!
“First contact with aliens suck,” he muttered as he browsed the internet at home… in the dark, huddled over the glowing screen that was the Q-net. Quantum internet was a little different to the normal internet. The screen sometimes gave a soft ‘wave’ of energy as the quantum system aligned to the ‘master’ system that ran the whole thing. People still didn’t know how the alien system connected to Earth… it just seemed to be a ‘natural’ thing that happened once a species created their own Quantum Internet.
James sighed. It was almost midnight. He didn’t care if he was tired… he felt he was close to finding a new website. Some way to ‘make’ money outside Earth’s crude system. It became a bit of an obsession.
First contact wasn’t what people expected. People had hoped ten years ago when the quantum net was first fired up, that contact with the aliens would be imminent. They were still waiting.
There were no aliens coming down on ships… no interstellar trade of high technology. The aliens were basically free-market capitalists and Earth was just a backwater ‘nothing’ planet. Until there was a reason for them to come here… this was the entirety of the tenuous relationship they could hope for. Some argued it was for the best… and many suggested that actually, a barter system made total sense when dealing with a lower tech planet like Earth. It certainly re-wrote the expectations of many people… but James really wanted to meet them. He wanted to walk the stars with them…
The teenager dived through pages of links… using a translator program he had been tweaking for years since he was a kid. Maybe it was silly, but he thought he could easily become one of the richest people on Earth if he simply got a job for an alien somewhere. Given that the alien credit system has a tenuous connection to Earth’s economy… whoever got enough credit could get really powerful alien technology. If a food replicator cost about 5000 credits, that was about a million dollars! Imagine someone ‘selling’ replicator technology… it would be unimaginable wealth.
Eventually James stumbled onto what looked like ‘alien google’… though there was no search bar to type into. “Hm… need to speak it in their language.” This was quite a common interface. From what most people had guessed, the system the aliens used was geared towards ‘speaking’ commands. A microphone could do that of course, and the system would respond appropriately but it had to do it in ‘their’ language.…
James wanted to go deeper. The alien language was actually oddly ‘musical’ so people played clips of their favourite bands or whatever they had to find a pattern. James played a short song he thought generated results.
“Well, what do we have here…” His first couple of commands got him to see a ‘news feed’. It was showing Earth rotating in space and what looked like a ‘twitter’ type comments section. He found some new fresh links… and this brought him to a jobs website! An actual job’s website. James held his breath…
‘Earn 100 credits a month!’
James gasped. hundreds?! That- that would be an insane amount! Just in one month?! He clicked on the link and tried to work out just ‘what’ the job was.
The resulting website was… hard to translate. It seemed to show a bunch of items that were to be… tested? “Huh… is this their word for ‘beta testing?’” This would be right up his street! He was suddenly shown a form to put ‘details’ in. He tried his best… it wanted his name, age, gender… species… it was learned a while ago it was generally best not to ‘lie’ as the system somehow detected deception- though not unintentional errors. The Q-net probably had a lie detector built in… the system processed it. It then showed him the ‘game’ to beta-test.
“Character creation… cool.”
He tried to augment it a bit with the available drop down menu but he didn’t have enough credits to change the character which was just a ‘shadow’. “Great it’s a gacha game…” He sighed. Even the aliens had worked that out. He wasn’t too surprised given they only wanted to sell stuff. However, he couldn’t do anything except hit the ‘random’ button… which would cost 20 credits- almost all that he had. Still… the prospect of this earning money back was the chance of a lifetime. He pressed the button and the entire screen lit up.
Contract Approved
James blinked. The words appeared in clear English to him. As he stared all the words on the website started to … make sense?! “What the heck?” The entire website now made sense to him. It was like a light in a dark room… He became giddy with excitement. “Language package installed?!” He could now understand… the alien internet! Wait- did that mean they installed the package… inside his head?!
There was an odd ‘flash’ of light as something suddenly materialised on his desk. This was not unheard of. The packages from Ailen Amazon came in a similar fashion. However instead of the usual grey cubes this one had a more ornate design with a strange silvery sheen to it. The package had a hand-print scanner as was customary. James became even more excited as he touched it. The strange box did what all the other packages did, turning into a ball of light and appearing as the item bought. James found a strange ‘wand’ in his hand…
“Huh… what’s this…” The wand was a silver colour, about a eight inches long. At the end of it appeared to be some kind of white crystal. “A diamond?!” It couldn’t be… there was a strange light inside it.The wand suddenly flashed and… James felt rather light headed.
Blinking his eyes, he now felt… very peculiar. He rubbed his eyes, realising his glasses were gone… yet he could still see fine?! His vision had now became ‘augmented’ somehow, with an HUD much like a video game. It wasn’t too distracting, but it seemed to show things like HP, Magic points, Skills, and various other general ‘RPG type’ descriptions. With a thought the interface was dismissed… was this some kind of ‘iron man’ suit?! He looked down…
“Oh- God!” The new girl screamed as ‘she’ quickly touched her body. She was a little on the short side but not overly so. Silvery white hair which was wrapped into two distinct tails that almost seemed to defy gravity, flowing gently with a life of its own. She stood about five foot four perhaps. Her body was quite ‘spritely’, and her primary clothing was white… matching her silvery white hair. The white dress stopped to just above her knees and was incredibly frilly. There were highlights of pink around the top… She looked like a ballerina. Small A-cup sized breasts were underneath a blouse with a large feminine pink bow on her modest chest. Her legs had… stockings?! White ones too, on small slender legs with simple silvery shoes.
Stepping, she felt.. light… very light.
The new girl stared quickly at her body for an unimaginable amount of time and saw that even the amount of ‘credits’ she had was tied into the new HUD display.
‘Instructions arriving.’
A letter appeared with a blue flash of light like the Alien Amazon Package… in that strange alien language yet somehow, she could read it. Somehow… James could read the alien language now.
“Congratulations on becoming a magical girl. You will earn credits based on your performance as per the contract. You are obligated to work for at least a month… if you choose to leave early you will no longer be able to earn any credits on any Interstellar system.”
A month…
James just looked dumfounded… “I’m… I’m a… magical girl?” She cried out. The words seemed foreign in her girlish voice… a voice that wasn’t hers either. “…impossible…” She stared at her HUD… it was indeed just like a video game. She found she had a bunch of ‘points’ to put into her stats. Some default ones were already added-
“James? Are you still on your computer? It’s bedtime!” her mother called walking up to the door.
“Crap!” The girl glanced around not sure what to do. Her mother couldn’t catch her like this! She quickly jumped into her bed, pulling in the strange skirt and girlish legs hiding as much of her hair as possible. She hoped she could ‘pretend’ to sleep, and her mom would think it was him. She held her breath slightly hearing the creaking of steps.
The door slowly opened… her mother glanced around. “Oh, that boy got another thing from the aliens,” She sighed glancing at the strange box. “He’ll run out of credits eventually… everyone doses. I can’t believe I wasted it on pain-free high heels.” She slowly closed the door.
James sighed. Her mother was gone. “Thank goodness…” This … this was nuts. Incredible! …but nuts. He slowly got up and saw a function on his HUD… return to civilian mode? She mentally chose it…
A soft blush of light across he girl’s features and… ‘he’ was back to normal! James quickly stood up and stared in the mirror… the strange HUD was still there when he thought of it. It was like his brain was now connected to the Q-net? How was that even possible? Did the aliens put something in his brain? The strange wand had also disappeared… yet it felt … close.
As an experiment James selected to change back to his ‘super’ form. The strange wand appeared once more in his hand first… and this was followed by the transformation into a girl again. A bright surge of light that no doubt could be noticed if anyone glanced at his drawn windows.
The new girl was less surprised this time to see ‘her’ form… her silvery hair… the dress… blouse… “She’s… so cute!” James exclaimed. “I mean- I’d- jeez… I wish I could meet her- um-“ she was her though. She gently searched... under the underwear… not even ‘sure’ if she should but… she had to check. The girl appeared to be his age, perhaps a bit more innocent looking and fresh faced so it felt a little ‘awkward’ to check… but yes… this body was female…
“I’m… a.. a girl…” She whispered. “This is… wrong-“ It was wrong… wasn’t it? Girls never … liked her- she bit her lip staring at her feeling strange conflicts of emotions. There was no getting out that it felt ‘weird’ being a girl... weird being in a body that wasn’t her own. If people in class found out about this he would be classed as such a weirdo!
James quickly changed back, seeing the wand vanish from his hand. He was back to normal once more… normal everywhere… “I need to read this contract.”
The contract itself was easily available on whatever had been put in his brain. The file simple lit up with all the important passages. He saw he had the option to ‘quit’… but if he did, he would lose out on access to the Alien Q-Net… and they reserve the right for further ‘judgement’ depending on the circumstances. The threat of losing Q-Net was bad enough. There was no way… no way he would lose that!
But still… “A job… as… a magical girl… me?!” It was crazy… loony preposterous! Did the aliens know he was a guy or had he messed up that form earlier? Was this random?! The fact he could change back though meant he didn’t have to worry too much… right? The ‘job’ promised a hundred credits a month as a basic salary… which was actually ‘huge’ for an Earthling- though not enough to get a spaceship… There also appeared to be ‘punitive punishments’ if he did something reckless… which included ‘not’ changing into magical girl form at least one a day and ‘do’ a good deed or provide some kind of service. Extra credit was given for exceptional work… There were a bunch of ‘quests’… to try, the first of which was…
“….make a friend?” Make a friend…as a magical girl... for one hundred credits?!
James sighed.
His life just got ‘very’ complicated…
