Nothing reminds people civilization is collapsing faster than not being able to flush a toilet.
Tom trudged beside me toward the Puma, still bleary-eyed from a night spent half-sleeping, half-haunted by crystalline geometry nightmares. “So let me get this straight,” he said, rubbing his face. “We’re just… going to repair water infrastructure like nothing happened yesterday?”
“Correct.”
“Even though we discovered an Eldritch IKEA monolith that breaks math?”
“Yes.”
He blinked at me. “Do you hear yourself?”
“I do,” I said, pulling the Puma door open. “And I agree it sounds bad. But water stops being optional faster than dimensional physics does.”
“That’s the most terrifying sentence anyone has said to me since Tuesday.”
“Welcome to adulthood.”
“Return me to the tutorial area.”
“No refunds.”
He groaned and climbed in.
We weren’t the only ones up early. As we drove into town, I spotted people milling around with MinTabs in hand—checking lists, coordinating, or reading the kids’ game instructions. The air of dread that had clung to the supermarket plaza after the coup was mostly gone. In its place was something far more resilient:
Purpose.
Helen met us near the edge of the plaza, clipboard tucked under one arm, MinTab in the other. I wasn’t sure where she was getting clipboards in the post-apocalypse, but I suspected she had a hidden stash.
“Morning,” she called. “Are you still planning on taking the water team out today?”
“Yep,” I said. “You got volunteers for me?”
She snorted. “Do you think a town with no working toilets wouldn’t volunteer? Half the people here would carry you on a throne if it meant getting showers back.”
Tom perked up. “Showers?”
“Still not optional,” I said.
She gestured behind her. Three people stepped forward.
First was a wiry older woman in denim overalls, steel-gray hair tied in a practical bun. She had “I know what I’m doing, don’t talk down to me” energy radiating off her in waves.
“This is Marianne,” Helen said. “She ran maintenance on the old sanitation plant before everything died.”
Marianne nodded at me. “I don’t know what you did to that farm over there, but it’s running smoother than anything in this county has run in a decade. Figure you can work the same magic on pumps and pipes.”
I resisted the urge to say “technically it’s mana, not magic” because that would’ve caused problems fast.
“We’ll get it working,” I promised.
Next was a lanky teenage boy wearing a faded band shirt and a shy expression. “This is Jay. He was apprenticing with the county utilities before the Reset.”
Jay shifted awkwardly and gave a small wave. “Hi.”
“Glad to have you,” I said warmly. “We’ll need your hands.”
“And this,” Helen continued, gesturing to the last man—broad-shouldered, mid-thirties, with a thick beard and hands that had definitely seen a wrench or two, “is Luke. Plumber by trade.”
“Still am,” he grunted. “Just out of work.”
I shook his hand. “Not anymore.”
Helen raised an eyebrow at how easily he accepted that. “You seem awfully confident.”
Luke shrugged. “Ain’t nobody else fixing the damn water.”
Fair enough.
“Alright,” I said, motioning to the Puma. “Grab your gear. Let’s go see what the Great Reset did to our plumbing.”
The water treatment facility sat on the outskirts of town, squat and blocky with faded blue paint peeling off in dusty curls. The buildings themselves looked intact—no looting or vandalism—which meant the damage would be internal.
Pipes. Pumps. Electrical control systems. Filters.
All the things people never think about until they stop working.
Minerva’s drones fanned out around us as we parked. A low hum filled the air as they began scanning, mapping the site in overlapping sweeps.
“Alright team,” I said, stepping out, “first step is assessment.”
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“You talk like a foreman,” Tom muttered.
“I talk like someone who doesn’t want to get electrocuted.”
“Fair.”
Marianne marched straight toward the main control building like she owned the place. Jay jogged after her. Luke ambled along more casually, but he had the air of someone who would fix a pipe then immediately critique its previous installer.
Inside, the building was a museum of dead technology. Control panels covered in dust. Switches stuck halfway through cycles. Monitors with cracked displays. The big breaker box was off—because of course it was—but even with power restored, most of these components wouldn’t have survived the Reset.
Marianne tapped the main console with a knuckle. “This baby’s older than you are, Robert. I was supposed to retire before they replaced her. Guess I’ll get my hands on her one last time.”
“That sounded almost affectionate,” Tom said.
“It was,” Marianne shot back. “Respect your elders.”
Minerva’s voice spoke through the nearest drone. “Electrical system non-functional. Fifty-three percent of components show catastrophic burnout. Thirty percent display anomalous failure signatures consistent with Reset effects. Remaining seventeen percent are salvageable.”
“Translation,” Luke said, crossing his arms, “we’re replacing everything.”
“Pretty much,” I agreed.
Jay looked overwhelmed. “How do we… start?”
“Step one,” I said, “is understanding the system layout.”
I opened a door to the Library World.
Marianne blinked. “Well I’ll be. You really do have one hell of a toolbox.”
Jay gawked openly. “Is that—are we—”
Luke rubbed his beard. “Huh.”
Tom clapped Jay on the back. “Welcome to the weird part.”
Inside the Library, I pulled up blueprints of regional water plants—modern ones, old ones, hybrid designs, emergency bypass systems. Ava zipped through the air excitedly, highlighting relevant schematics.
“This,” I said, pointing to a hologram, “is the standard layout. Intake, pre-filter basin, chemical treatment, filtering, distribution. The Reset fried everything with a circuit board, but the physical structure is intact. We can rebuild the entire system with new components.”
“Where do we get those components?” Jay asked, eyes wide.
“We make them,” I said.
Marianne stared at me. “Boy, you’re telling me you can fabricate a whole treatment system?”
“With some time,” I said. “And mana.”
Tom raised a finger. “He means ‘magic.’ But don’t freak out. It’s industrial-strength magic.”
“Magic?” Jay whispered.
Luke shrugged. “Long as the toilets flush, he can call it fairy juice.”
Ava crackled with amusement. “Fairy juice. That’s a new one.”
I sighed and led the group through the Library structure, showing them:
-
Modular pumps
-
Smart valves
-
Low-maintenance filters
-
Durable composite pipes
-
Redundancy systems
-
Bypass loops
I emphasized two things:
1. The town would learn to operate it.
2. I wasn’t building anything that only I could maintain.
That settled some unspoken tension.
After the walkthrough, I guided everyone back out to the real building.
“Minerva,” I ordered, “start detached drone repair protocol. Tag components for removal.”
“Affirmative.”
Drones swarmed the facility in a coordinated dance, marking pipes, breakers, and consoles with projected indicators.
Marianne whistle low. “Wish we had these back when the county budget kept cutting us.”
Jay crouched by the intake valve. “The sediment buildup is insane… this would’ve caused problems even without the Reset.”
Luke smacked a rusted pipe. “We’re replacing half this metal before it leaks again.”
I pulled out my multi-tool and started dismantling panels.
Tom lingered by the door, watching everything with a nervous, restless energy. Finally, he said, “Do you ever think about how impossible all of this is? I mean… before all this, you worked in IT. Now you’re out here fixing the entire world.”
“There’s no one else to do it,” I said simply.
He nodded. “Yeah. I figured that’s what you’d say.”
Hours passed in steady, focused work.
-
Drones lifted old equipment out.
-
I shaped new parts in the Library and installed them.
-
Marianne directed pump placement with near-military precision.
-
Luke welded and sealed pipes like an artist.
-
Jay absorbed everything like a sponge.
We were a strange team—half old world, half new—but it worked.
When the intake system came online for the first time, a deep rumble echoed through the building. Water surged through the freshly laid pipes, clear and powerful.
Jay pumped his fist. “We did it!”
Marianne smirked. “Don’t get excited until the filters hold.”
“They will,” I said.
A few minutes later, the filtration indicators glowed green.
Water: Clean. Flow: Stable. Pressure: Optimal.
Luke exhaled. “Damn. Alright. I’ll admit it. This is good work.”
“High praise,” Tom muttered.
We moved to the final step: distribution.
I installed a mana-infused pressure regulator disguised as a high-efficiency mechanical valve. It used ambient energy to stabilize flow across the network—a small touch, but the town didn’t need to know the details.
People didn’t need to know the magic keeping their showers warm.
Minutes later, the system hummed to life.
A system notification blinked in my vision.
[Infrastructure Node Restored: Water Facility]
[Progress Toward Regional Stabilization: 4%]
[Reward: +1 Intelligence]
I hid a smile. Progress was progress.
By the time we drove back, people were already noticing.
A man stepped out of his house with a towel wrapped around his head, shouting, “It works! Water’s back!”
Kids chased each other through sprays from garden hoses.
An older woman held her MinTab up and projected a rainbow arc with a drone, laughing.
Helen met us halfway, breathless with excitement.
“Did you do it? Is it real?”
“Water’s running,” I confirmed. “Fully treated, fully pressurized.”
She looked like she might cry. “Robert… this will change everything.”
I nodded. “One step at a time.”
She grabbed my arm. “The council is meeting tonight. We need you there. People are… hopeful. But they’re also scared. We need to address that before it grows.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I figured.”
“And Robert?”
“Yeah?”
She clasped my forearm, eyes bright. “Thank you.”
Tom leaned in and whispered, “She’s totally into you.”
I elbowed him lightly.
Back at the compound, I let myself breathe. The day had gone well—better than expected. Water was life, and now the town had it again.
But the anomaly still pulsed in the back of my mind.
Ava floated near the ceiling, unusually subdued. “Robert… I’ve been analyzing the energy fluctuations from the ridge.”
“Did they change?”
She hesitated.
“Yes. Slightly. Very slightly.”
“Because I touched it?”
“Possibly. Or because it’s waking up.”
I swallowed.
Minerva chimed in. “I recommend returning to the anomaly within seventy-two hours for comparative readings.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll do that.”
Tom looked between us. “I’m hearing a lot of ominous foreshadowing.”
“You’re fine,” I said.
“Liar,” he shot back.
Fair.
A quiet moment settled over the room.
Water was running. Infrastructure was stabilizing. People were rebuilding their lives.
The town was healing.
But the world was not done changing.
The System flickered again in my mind.
[New Objective: Train Local Water Team to Operate Facility]
[Deadline: 14 Days]
Ava hovered closer. “Your journey is accelerating.”
I looked out at the horizon through the window—the ridge barely visible in the fading sunlight.
“So is the world,” I replied.
And tomorrow would bring new challenges, new repairs, and new mysteries.
One pipe at a time.
One town at a time.
One anomaly at a time.