Broken Interface - Kernal: Post Apocalyptic Zombie LITrpg Progression Fantasy, page 1
Broken Interface
Book 1: Kernel
Author: Alex Kozlowski
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 Alex Kozlowski
All rights reserved.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Log Report 5 - Entry 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Log Report 5 – Entry 2
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Log Report 5 - Entry 3
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Log Report 5 - Entry 4
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Log report 5 - Entry 5
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Log Report 5 - Entry 6
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Log report 5 - Entry 7
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Log report 5 - Entry 8
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Log report 5 - Entry 9
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Log Report 5 - Entry 10
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Author’s Note
Biography
LITRPG Groups
Chapter 1
Daniel’s head pounded. The girl lying across him tethered him to the bed and made it impossible for him to get up—for the life of him, he couldn’t even remember her name. Issie, or something like that. She had been all sparkling eyes and come-hither hands on the dance floor last night, but frankly, beyond that he could not remember. A bit of kissing in the lift, and then . . .
Honestly, it was too early to be dealing with it. Hopefully, she would be gone by the time he woke up properly so they would not have to deal with the awkwardness of getting to know each other again while they were both hungover. Being in a hotel room could go either way: easier to sneak out, but given his luck, she would probably hang around for the complimentary breakfast.
His head was thumping, and it was too early for this. He drifted back to sleep, thinking about what crop rotation would be best in the front paddock and getting back to a bit of normalcy.
Daniel was torn into wakefulness with the entire world feeling like it was deteriorating around him. Everything was wrong: fluctuating pressure that was making his sinuses pop, tearing chalk board nails, and blinding flashing light. It could not be real. It had the feel of a weird dream.
His skin crawled separately from him, while his feet were weightless, and despite usually being able to control himself in dreams, he was completely powerless. It was not a dream; it was best described as a sickening nightmare. Pressure bore down on him from all sides until his joints creaked. The universe trembled, edges of shapes blurred, and everything was shaky, like in an acid trip. Daniel tried to wake up, and it did nothing. That was wrong. This vulnerability was not right.
WAKE UP! Daniel shouted the words out loud inside his own head. Usually, he could snap himself out of a nightmare or even alter it to something more favourable. Those techniques were not working.
He was at his farm.
The dreamscape was unresponsive. His heart thundered while existence coiled around him. He wondered if this was what everyone else felt when they spoke of nightmares. He was trapped. There was nothing he could do.
He wanted to run, scream, and do anything, but the world pressed down, and his muscles were useless.
Energy coursed through him, and within the dream construction, he panicked. The energy was not right: It felt like it was plucking bits and pieces of his body away, doing something to it, and then putting them back. It was doing stuff to him. His hindbrain recognised it as a risk, but there was no running from it. It was everywhere, entering with every gasping breath but also soaking in via his skin. Changing him and, if it kept going, it would change him into a monster. How? Why?
Nightmares did not need a logical explanation. It was better to direct the power; he clung to that thought. If there was a way to focus it, then it might not tear him into little bits. So much potential was coursing through and around him.
Think!
To calm his mind, Daniel imagined himself back on the farm. Nurturing a new crop, watching the seed go through all those stages. His parents had not been retired back then, and they had ridiculed him for planting fancy crops. “No money,” they claimed. “Keep it simple. Cows and hay; the land is too poor for more,” they insisted. Yet he had loved the idea of growing something other than grass.
Daniel remembered planting the crops, all the different details that mattered. It was important to get the right variety to balance the sun, heat, water, and even the last crops used on that section of dirt. Some plants even required frost. All those facts were running through his head. It calmed him - to fall back onto his hobby.
The world was still crashing around him, but he felt like he was fixing the raging torrents within him.
How nice would it be to influence the growth of a plant directly? He imagined the seed receiving water and then the first tendril breaking out, reaching for the sun. That light infusing it with the energy to grow, then it would expand, one leaf, then multiple leaves, till you ended with a massive trunk. Going through the entire life process, but there was more! If it was a dream, he could control what happened!
Now the tree grew into a giant house, directed to do what he told it to. Dead wood, but rather than being dead, it was just dormant. Shaping a chair from floorboards, then sitting on it. Perfect. The energy felt like it was no longer running wild and instead was running in smooth, flowing streams focused around his chest area. Daniel mentally reviewed everything he knew about plants, recalling in his mind surprising detail from the thick biology books he had studied.
Despite the weirdness, Daniel almost laughed when he remembered the time he had set up a loudspeaker because there was a study that said it helped. Because why not?
Then he did the mathematics and realised the electricity costs meant, even the best-case scenario, he was losing money. That the weeds seemed to respond more positively than oats might have also played a fair part in his decision to abandon that experiment.
Farming in dad’s style was to pick the hay paddocks, watch the weather, fix the fences, feed the cows when they needed it, do all the odd jobs that popped up. Growing plants was different. It took energy in the form of sugars that usually came from the sun but did not have to, and then how the plant grew depended on the type of cell that budded off. If you could change the specialisation of cells at will—and theoretically it was possible—then from a single cell, you could create anything you wanted.
It felt like his head was growing to the point it would explode.
Distract yourself.
It might have been a forlorn hope, but Daniel, still trapped in the nightmare, focused on the idea of infusing life-giving sugar into cells and directing what they did. With that sort of power, it was like he could become a god. The internal energy kept hitting him, but now it was doing it smoothly without the destructive randomness that was there earlier.
The sickening sensations had not altered, and it felt like he was being co
This was a crazy-arse dream.
Daniel forced himself actively back into his happy spot. Remembering everything he knew about plants, reviewing their cellular structure once more, a crash course in how sun turned air and water into sugar and then sugar did the rest. The different cells that grew, developed, and specialised into leaves, branches, and trunks.
The surrounding pressure was getting worse. The external energy intensified, but when it entered, it was being sucked into his chest.
His body was still getting hammered, but he could feel more. The doona? Issy? She was moving next to him, but he could not move a hand of his own to acknowledge her. The forces surrounding him were too great.
His back burned, and not all the wild energy was being tamed. His heart pumped hard enough, like someone was playing the drums next to his head and just the bass was reaching him.
Boom. Boom.
Then she was kissing him. Irene, maybe? That sounded closer to her name, but he could not shake the feeling that it was wrong.
The nature of the kiss changed. It was no longer soft and loving, but morphed into a hard, forceful, needy one. He wanted to push her away, but his hands still refused to move. She had grains of sand or rice in her mouth, and her tongue was forcing them into his mouth.
What was happening?
Had she just slipped him something? Is that why he was having this wild trip? Daniel attempted to throw her off, but he was helpless. Paralysed? The sand started burning; it felt like it was wriggling and burrowing into his cheeks.
This was bad. Terrible form. He would have to have words with the crazy girl. Most people who knew him understood he would experiment. But forcing it onto him. That was just not ok.
There was nothing he could do about whatever she had given him. His mouth was numb and tasted coppery. Hopefully, it was not blood. Surely, she would not be giving him anything that was dangerous.
It felt like worms were wiggling toward his brain through his throat. Then they were in his brain, and he could not feel them, but he knew they were doing something. Everything went white.
Log Report 5 - Entry 1
I’m so excited. This event is going to be totally different from the others.
Bipeds!!
Yep, my host is a biped.
If I was a biological, I would do rhythmic pointless movements to celebrate.
My first time with a biped! The Atosis, with their flexibility, was fun, but something with two legs.
Wow!
I’m going to get to see first-hand how they even move without falling over. I know biomechanics, feedback loops, skeletal balance and all that stuff, but having two legs seems to be such an inefficient form and so impractical.
I’m expecting my host to pointlessly fall over lots.
He-he.
I know I shouldn’t be happy.
The unfortunate fact that I have a host means that another civilisation has put a noxious bomb in their reasoning centre, metaphorically at least, and has unleashed an Alpha catalysation event.
I know it’s not something to celebrate! But I get these emotions anyway. It’s part of my makeup to be useful, so you can’t really blame me.
And!
This is a chance to see bipeds!!
Up close and everything!
Excrement clouds of happiness!
I guess I need to be a little disciplined in these reports and focus on realities to build up collective knowledge to help future civilisations.
So, some serious stuff.
Initiation was not smooth for my host.
She…. (Pronouns are apparently important to them, and according to the culture pack, can be very confusing in their use. Weird. As far as I’m concerned there are only a finite number of states that deserve separate pronouns, ‘Bearing’ (currently fermenting young), ‘Not Procreating’ (not willing to help create young) and Procreating (interested in creating young) which then gets split into how many weird sexes the species gets. Note, I am of the firm belief that if there are over five sexes, you should give up on differentiation in the written language.
.
Anyway, she was caught in a massive mana storm amongst a dense collection of sapient population. Too many in one spot and not enough of us, and the textbooks are pretty clear what that means.
Bipeds, fun! And Sapient Deconstruction, Sad! Two new experiences for me. I think I would have been thrilled to have a more standard life form to avoid the second event, but as the common saying goes, shaping an Alpha event is beyond even the Creator’s skills.
It is what it is, and with sapient deconstruction occurring, I knew immediately things were going to be challenging. Given the conditions, I let myself be guided by the 1789 seminal work, ‘Selective Information and Using it to Guide Without Controlling,’ along with the additional notes of 73345 and 21190.
The application of those teachings, I have to report, was only partially successful. My host is wilful and unfortunately directed almost sixty percent of the potential from the mana storm into healing structures. Nevertheless, the remaining capacity gives her a pretty intense offensive ability. Within which I successfully convinced her to sacrifice utility for extra impact.
End result: order-of-magnitude increase in survivability and…
Big boom! (Unfortunately, only when the stringent conditions are met, but I’m sure we’ll get a chance to experience.)
As per above, I was trying to apply selective information to guide, but my host selected it all by herself. It’s like Ivey (my host) is hard and caring, all at the same time. Very complicated. It probably has something to do with falling over lots. I’ll watch, monitor, and report whether my hypothesis, ‘Falling over lots creates dual personality in adult specimens,’ is accurate or not. I’ll also be testing the hypothesis, ‘Bipeds fall over more than… well, everything.’
Anyway, the mana storm was strong, and there was a nascent wobub being created next to my host. Unfortunately, the mana storm intensity exceeded parameters, and I observed signs of sapient deconstruction becoming a high probability event. I know I shouldn’t have, and my host could defend herself if full deconstruction occurred, but it was a sapient. I couldn’t just leave him to the mercy of the storm, and Ivey has the caring side; plus, saving him would increase her survivability; plus, she had a powerful instinct to preserve the nascent wobub’s sapience. Plus… there were a few other reasons I won’t list.
Despite the warning, and because of the four I meant ten different reasons above, it was advantageous to act.
I communicated the cost of intervening to my host. Ivey deemed them acceptable, and we may have created a co-wobub.
May have!
Only time would tell.
But how incredible would that be if it was successful? I’m absolutely quivering at the moment.
Chapter 2
Daniel woke abruptly. The dream was over. The sun was up, but beyond that, he did not know how much time had passed. There were sounds of distant screaming.
He leapt out of bed.
Completely starkers.
That had sounded like terror and pain. What was happening? His eyes flashed over his room, but there was no one there.
Great, he could not remember a thing, but had been hoping they just returned to his room and crashed. His current level of undress suggested otherwise. He had liked the girl, but towards the end of the evening there had been some clingy vibes.
Daniel grabbed his clothes, peering around. Issy, or whatever her name was, appeared to be gone.
That was good.
He gulped down a nearby glass of water and was legitimately surprised to find he was not feeling hungover.
Something was very wrong: the dreams, that kiss, and the fact his head was not throbbing like he expected.
He was off his game, badly. That dream had done a number on his emotional state. Getting some food would ground him, so the next question was whether he had missed the complimentary breakfast. Given the bright light coming through the window, he was pretty sure he knew that answer.
No hangover, no awkward conversations, versus no breakfast. That was a big win in his book.
What time is it, anyway? He thought. The hotel room’s alarm clock was dead, and when he grabbed it, so was his mobile.
“What’s the chance of that?” he mused out loud to the empty room. None of the lights worked, so there must have been some sort of wide blackout. There was also no more screaming, and it was possible that had been the tail end of his nightmare and not real life.
