A wall of text greeted Francis after the system initialized. Then it flickered and went out. The system tried again but got the same result. Normally it would be able to directly interface with a mortal’s mind but this one had an abnormally strong will. (And an incredibly thick skull.)

  Francis watched the lights flicker in the darkness for a bit then went to sleep. The system continued trying to connect with him but it was ignored. After giving up on connecting directly, it decided to try a new approach and summoned an avatar.

  A floating two dimensional drawing of a man’s face with a glowing white outline appeared in front of Francis. He cracked an eye open, decided it wasn’t a threat, then went back to sleep. There wasn’t any more chow, things to kill, or people giving him orders so he was going to catch some Z’s. Nineteen years in the Marines had taught him to eat and sleep whenever he could because he might not get the opportunity later.

  The avatar took the form of a magnificent longsword and tried again. Francis seemed marginally more interested and at least kept his eyes open this time. But other than that he ignored the weapon.

  The system was frustrated, which was a new feeling for it. The system wasn’t used to having feelings or opinions about things. But it was definitely forming strong opinions about Francis. He was going to be trouble. So much trouble.

  Unbeknownst to it, the system had been annoyed into achieving sentience. It was discovering a whole range of new emotions and feelings, thanks to Francis.

  System tried to understand this strange creature known as a Marine. It knew everything that happened within its boundaries, but Earth was outside its sight. It began to cycle its avatar through different forms at random hoping to make a connection. One was bound to work, eventually.

  Finally it got a reaction. Francis reached out and stroked the familiar form of the Benelli M4 combat shotgun. As his fingers touched the glowing avatar, a connection was made. Normally, System would have selected a calm soothing voice for its avatar, but Francis had pissed it off. So instead it loaded the voice file labeled Paperclip.Generic.Assistant.01 and set the volume to max.

  “HI!” Screamed the shotgun in a voice that was high pitched and deafeningly loud. “I SEE YOU HAVE BEEN ISEKAIED! WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO HELP WITH THAT?”

  Francis grunted an affirmative. He was happy they turned up the volume for him. Sometimes it was hard to hear things over his tinnitus.

  The system took this as its chance to shove a wall of text directly into his brain. Francis’ eyes bled as the unwelcome words and numbers flowed into him.

  Suddenly the text vanished and Francis was back in the black room with the glowing shotgun avatar in his hands. He rubbed his head and grunted. A few seconds later the shotgun disappeared and a portal opened. But, because System was mad at Francis, it opened the portal directly beneath him. He fell into it with a grunt of surprise, and vanished.

  Patreon! Or check out my other original works:

  Death by Chocolate: (Complete) Action, Noir, Non-Human MC

  Eden's Echo: Action, Cyberpunk, Mystery

  Magic Murder Cube Marine: LitRPG, Comedy, Isekai

  Soul Guardian: Romantic comedy, found family, slice of life

  Tales from the Meatverse: (Hiatus) HFY, Sci-FI, Short Stories

  https://www.alexkarne.com for links to the merch store and discord!