Irl Console - Volume 1 Chapter 6 Player Part 2

*escape*

Dave had already somewhat expected this but still found himself dumbstruck. Currently the familiar looking system menu from Skyrim occupied his vision. Only three options were not greyed out though which was a relief. Dave couldn’t really wrap his head around what would happen if he could change his life’s difficulty settings or, even weirder, its video settings… The three available selections were Save, Load, and Mod Configuration. Dave was relieved to see that Quit was greyed out. What would happen if he were to quit? Would he immediately die? Would all of this turn out to be a dream? Would he find himself back at the mercy of the silent pilot? Quitting was definitely not a good idea. Dave made a mental note that under no circ.u.mstances should he ever type “qqq” in the console either.

Dave was curious to check out the Mod Configuration selection but decided against it. Most of the time that the pilot had spent playing (and extensively modding) Skyrim, Dave himself had been zoned out as much as possible. He was really suffering for his lack of knowledge now that Skyrim had come to slap him in the face in the real world. Well, suffering was rather a strong term. With his studious nature and a pressing need to make sense of his new found abilities as a motivation, Dave knew that his ignorance would be short lived.

Since Dave could already Save and Load through the console he figured that he already knew what would be in those options so he decided to instead see if he could really do magic. Not checking if he had magic immediately when he thought about it had been a serious test of will. Having lived without a sense of his own will for so long, Dave couldn’t help but remind himself that he could choose something other than instant gratification. Now though, he had delayed for long enough!

*escape*

*tab*

Skills, Items, Magic, Map… It was all there. Dave mentally clicked on Magic and beheld the empty menu. Well, it was to be expected that there was nothing there but part of him was hoping for the good old beginner Flames spell. The fact that he had the menu option, though, indicated that acquiring magic was a possibility. At least, that’s what Dave took from it.

The questions that occupied his mind now was that if he could, in fact, acquire magic spells and dragon shouts, what would he use them for? It was pretty impossible to be low key with casting the spells of Skyrim what with the accompanying light show. Even then, Dave may have doubted his sanity for a while but he wasn’t some psycho that would go around casting chain lightning at crowds in the mall. He wasn’t in Special Ops and he had only ever been in one ‘fight’ in his life. Even then, it would be a stretch to call that a fight as it was just a local gang of eleven or so youths that jumped Dave and his friend in the park when they were kids. The pilot had decided to just curl up into a fetal position and take the kicks to the head. Dave still had a chip on his shoulder about that one. Now that he had sole control, Dave was determined to live by the mantra “Do No Harm But Take No Shit.” Well, at least there was something that would give him the impetus to grow stronger.

Strength, what does one need strength for in the modern world? Most of the time, nothing. Even then, if one’s strength is still insufficient to match up to a gun then what’s the use? Just get a gun and learn how to use it… At least then the playing field is equal. Dave was hesitant to think of strength in such a way though. To him, the concept of strength was most truly embodied by the shield. It was about how much force and pressure one could take from the outside world without breaking that most clearly displayed strength. The sword was different, it was designed to test and surpass the strength of others. It was designed for offensive purposes – To kill or coerce. That was the major problem Dave saw in the world currently. Too many people lived by the sword instead of taking up the shield as their main source of strength.

Dave’s pulled his thoughts back to focus on the original questions once again.

“If I could really use magic, what would I use it for? Healing, not out in the open at least. I’d end up being experimented on in a lab somewhere. Being a superhero? I can’t save everyone and besides, who needs a superhero if there aren’t any supervillains? Charming my way to political power and putting the world to rights? Haha! Hell no! No one has the right to rule anyone else no matter how much power they have. Who’s to say I’d know better anyway? I considered myself a crazy person until just now… No, if I had magic I’d use it for one thing and one thing only: To be Unf.u.c.kable! – with… To be Free. Truly Free. No one able to force me to do anything I don’t want to do even with a gun to my head. I want control of my own fate!”

With a new sense of direction for the future, Dave decided to continue his exploration.

“Right, next. Skills.”

Dave opened up the skill tree and was almost blinded by the huge number of perks in the constellations that surrounded him. His pilot had been using the Ordinator perk overhaul which added over 400 new perks to the vanilla perk trees but what was before Dave’s eyes seemed like way more than that. It was actually quite beautiful. Dave felt like some sort of cosmic being striding amidst the stars. From a cursory glance it seemed like all of the normal perk trees were there although Archery had been renamed to Marksmanship.

It looked like it was going to take a whole lot of time for Dave to read through all of the perk trees and, to be honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to just yet. He could live just fine without perks for the moment and it would be a nice surprise to see what he could choose when he finally earned his first perk point. He had, however, already decided that his first point would be going towards Restoration. That was his job after all, fixing people up.

Dave could spend eternity in the console and menu spaces if he wished but he really didn’t want to. It was kinda creepy not having any input from the outside world for so long. Dave actually found that he missed breathing. He decided it was time to call it a night. He’d go to bed early and tackle the huge task of exploring his new abilities slowly over the next few days. He exited the skills menu and went about getting ready to turn in.

As he laid in bed, Dave smiled to himself. Tomorrow he’d be wearing Armani.