System Architect

I was glad that I had a weekend to relax after the sheer stupidity I had dealt with during the week. Without any homework to do—for school at least, there were still quests—I had more time to devote towards completing the blanket.

I had decided on a patchwork style with a winter theme so Elizabeth had assisted me in measuring and cutting all of the squares. I laid out the pattern on the floor and picked the squares up row-wise so that I would be able to continue the pattern without having everything laid out the whole time. Since then, I had been carefully stitching square after square together to form those rows.

I used the same techniques I had learned from Elizabeth to measure, mark, and then sew the seams. There were a few times where I had to pick a seam apart and redo it; but with consistent practice, this happened less and less. I made sure to use a strong stitch even though that took longer to do by hand—I wanted the blanket to last a long time!

Over the weekend, I was able to complete another two rows before I had a thought. With it being early October, I considered making a simple costume for Halloween. I didn’t have a good idea, so I started by going downstairs.

“Mom?” I began when I located her in the kitchen.

“Hmm?”

“I was thinking of making a Halloween costume, but I don’t have any good ideas. It’ll have to be simple enough that I can do it myself.”

“You could always do a ghost with a bed sheet or maybe a cowboy? I think you have some boots somewhere and the rest of the costume we could get at a thrift store.”

“Maybe. I’ll see what Dad comes up with before I decide. Those are good ideas though!”

Mom nodded.

I chatted with her for several more minutes before I excused myself and went back up to my room to work on the blanket and my quests.

Sunday evening, when I was back at Dad’s, I asked him the same question I’d asked Mom.

“How about a jellyfish or a rainy day?”

I laughed as I thought about them.

“Maybe,” I said, “I’ll give it some thought before I decide.”

To do just that, I went up to my room. I used my laptop to consider my costume options but ended up getting distracted by an email from school. My exam results were up!

After signing in, I checked my classes one by one. The results were… good. Aside from the chemistry lab—which didn’t have an exam—all of the results were at least in the B range and all but two were As.

Of course, instead of going back to my project of figuring out a good costume idea, I went straight into checking on how my writing income was doing—poorly—as well as reading some of the not-so-nice-comments. They put me in a mood that only copious amounts of cat videos could fix.

Eventually—in spite of my proclivity for procrastination—I returned to the task at hand. I spent at least an hour looking at all types of costumes ranging from the incredibly simple—a cardboard box—to intricate cosplay. I was looking for something in between and ended up picking a box of popcorn.

The overall build didn’t look too hard—mostly cardboard with some paint and puffy colored balls. I shot off an email to Mom to hold onto some of her cardboard boxes for me as well as a link to the costume idea. With that done, I went to bed for the night.

The next day—after school—I went to the sewing meetup with Dad. Mom met us there to drop off the cardboard for me. Instead of working on the blanket, I chose to work on the costume. As soon as I entered the room, Elizabeth came over.

“What did you bring?” she wondered aloud.

“I’m going to make my Halloween costume,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m going to be a box of popcorn!”

“How cute! Do you need any help?”

“Mm-hmm,” I nodded.

Elizabeth and I laid out the cardboard and she helped me measure just how big each cardboard section needed to be. I cut them out while she warmed up the glue gun—I wasn’t allowed to use it, which was rather frustrating.

We worked alternating between gluing and fitting everything together around my body. Elizabeth left a seam in the back where she glued Velcro on both sides to seal the gap when the costume was on me.

When the general shape of the container was completed, I added straps to go over my shoulders that would hold the weight of everything. The final thing to add was an upper and lower section to help keep the costume rigid as well as to give me a place to attach all of the ‘popcorn’ around the top. At the end of the evening, I brought home the unfinished costume. All it needed was the popcorn and a coat of paint.

Over the next week, I gave the costume several coats of paint. That included a label of ‘Popcorn’ on the front. Keeping the lines straight was an exercise in patience—my coordination was still not amazing yet. Dad helped me with painter’s tape to get the lines just so.

When I got to Mom’s, I used some of the money I’d gained from writing to buy the rest of the supplies from a local craft store. Mom helped me hot-glue the popcorn balls to the top of the costume. For the final touch, I repurposed an old hat of mine by hot-gluing more balls to it. With that, the costume was complete. For all of the effort I put in, I gained a decent amount of experience—125 total—between Crafting Experience and Economic Experience.

While I still had absolutely no clue how the amount of experience was calculated, it seemed to be more the larger the project and the more effort I put in—to a point. I guessed that the experience was capped in some way by the size of the project moreso than the quality of the finished product.

“Can you put the whole costume on?” she asked. “I want to make sure the balls won’t bother you.”

I struggled to put it on but managed with her help.

“Oh my, you look so cute!” she exclaimed.

Mom pulled out her phone and took several pictures from every angle.

“How does it feel?” she asked while taking the pictures.

“Um, not bad,” I said. “Maybe a bit itchy against my neck.”

“Ok. Maybe put on a turtleneck or a light scarf or something? That might help to keep the itching down.”

“That could work. Do you have a scarf I could use?”

Mom said that she did and returned a couple minutes later with one. I carefully wrapped it around my neck and tucked it into the costume. Although warm, it was enough to block any itch from forming.

“Thanks, Mom. That works.”

“Great!”

She helped me out of the costume then showed me the pictures. I didn’t much care—I actually disliked taking pictures in general—but knew it was much easier to just go with the flow most of the time and put my foot down when needed.

Finally, it was Halloween. I decided to wear the costume to school for the laughs because it was a school day. Grandpa Joe was the one to pick me up and drive me to school that day.

“Lookin’ good,” he said when I hopped into his car for the ride over.

“Thanks,” I smiled.

“Looks like you worked hard on it—“

I nodded.

“—so just be careful not to ruin it while in class. I know you wouldn’t want all your hard work to be ruined before you get to trick-or-treat later.”

I nodded again.

“Are you looking forward to that?”

“Definitely!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t done this in forever and it’s a lot more fun to do as a kid than it is as an adult!”

“True,” Grandpa Joe chuckled.

He waved goodbye when we arrived at school. I waved back and made my way to my first class. The looks I got on my journey were awesome. Several people did double-takes while others just stared for a long time. I got a few people who came up to me and told me my costume looked awesome.

Each class that day went about the same. In one of them, the professor commented on how much of a distraction my attire was—oops—but also said it was creative—hooray. I did get a couple of picture requests along the way—and many more pictures taken without asking… those people could burn in hell for all I cared.

When my classes were done for the day, Dad came and picked me up. Mom still had to work so it made actually trick-or-treating with her difficult. He was delighted to see me in the costume. We went home and had dinner before it was finally time to go out.

Dad gave me a pillowcase to collect the candy in and a couple of glow sticks to make bracelets from. Then we were off.

A Night of Treats

Gather candy from houses

Success: Experience gained based on the amount of candy obtained

Failure: N/A

Expires: 5 hours, 22 minutes, 1 second

I was surprised to see the quest appear. I happily accepted it and followed Dad up the driveway to another house. The light was on but no one was home. Instead, there was a bowl and a sign saying to take a couple—so I did just that. Given the quest I had, I took more like a handful—something I normally would not have done—then it was on to the next.

The sun was still up but it was cloudy and so felt more like dusk than daytime. The quest cut out at midnight but I would be in bed long before then. Realistically, I had about two hours before my feet would be screaming. I chose to go left at the end of the driveway towards the center of town. The home density that way was higher and my legs were short—there was only so far I was going to be able to walk before I was done. I wanted to get as much experience from the quest as I could, something I explained to Dad as we walked.

I was excited—I loved Halloween—but also nervous because of the quest. The next house had a porch light on and a bunch of decorations in the yard. I walked up the driveway and carefully hopped from stone to stone on the path from the driveway to the door. A spooky cat meowed loudly as I approached the door. It wasn’t a real one but it did make me jump.

“Trick or treat!” I said when the door opened.

“My, don’t you look good! Popcorn!”

The man laughed and dropped a piece of candy into my pillowcase.

“Have another one for such a good costume!”

He dropped a second, larger candy bar into the pillowcase.

“Thank you!” I said before making my way carefully to the street.

I visited house after house. I only went for the ones that looked like they were participating in the holiday. There were some epic ones that had whole graveyards with fog machines and the whole nine yards. Others simply had their porch light on. I visited all of them.

Two blocks away from Dad’s house, I crossed and took the side road up a hill. The hill was steep and flanked on both sides by houses. There was a lot of trick-or-treaters moving up and down the hill and going from house to house. I slipped in with one of the groups, which made getting candy easier as I no longer had to wait for the adults to come to the door after knocking or ringing the bell.

At the top of the hill, I walked along the street the side road ended on before going back down the hill at the next road. By the time I got to the bottom, I was exhausted and ready to call it quits. Because of the quest, I pushed on to hit the rest of the houses that I had skipped over because they were on the opposite side of the street from Dad’s house.

Finally, we arrived home. Dad helped me out of my costume.

“Wow,” he said, hefting the bag with one hand. “Not a bad haul.”

“Yeah,” I yawned.

“Maybe next year we can ride around in the car later in the night to get whatever’s left out,” he said, “But this year I think you’re just a bit too tired to hang on.”

“Mmm,” I agreed, my eyes already closing.

Dad carried me up to my room and tucked me in for the night.