Starting The Chain

[Alert: Initializing The Chain

Hello there [Jump-Maker]! You have died. Congratulations. Those of us tasked with creating jumpers recognize that this is an odd thing to celebrate, but the reason we believe this is a moment for celebration is because you have been selected to go on a chain of your very own.

Your contributions to the discourse around what your world recognized as a hobby were a small part of expanding the community and promoting what some in your world saw as a fun and creative way to spend time. The jumps you made, coupled with the hours you spent with friends conversing about chains and your sincere passion for the subject matter touched the hearts, for lack of a better word, of several benefactors. 

Because of this, coupled with the untimely circumstances surrounding your demise, it was thought just by numerous benefactors to reward your efforts by sending you on a chain all your own. Please inform us as to what jump you would like to be your very first.

Also, as a general note: we have not erased memories of your death but for the time being you will not remember them. This is to allow you to more easily adjust to your new circumstances once you begin to transition into your new life in whatever destination you opt to visit.]

I attempt to open my eyes, or at least perceive anything other than the strange floating text box that seems to be "ahead" or "in front" of me. I struggle for what feels like several seconds before giving up.

The contents of the alert are alarming to say the least. I have died, apparently, and I must admit that that is less than optimal on my part. I should feel more strongly about that, but truthfully this is the first time I've been awake in some capacity and not felt any pain or physical discomfort in a long time so that strongly dulls the sadness I might otherwise feel. 

Plus I get to go on a multiversal journey, and it's hard for me to be sad about that. I always liked seeing new places and even if this is some sort of freaky illusion my brain is putting together as a sort of afterlife the prospect of going on this journey is still exciting enough to rouse the adventurer in me.

I momentarily wonder if I'm dreaming, but if I am, a sudden effort on my part to wake up doesn't work. I mentally sigh and decide to consider the question I was challenged to answer. If I'm going on a chain I need to select my first jump… 

I don't know if I actually have benefactors to entertain, or what happens when I die, so I guess I should start off small. A part of me is tempted by the prospect of visiting Generic First Jump, but I also realize that I don't love the lack of consequences to it and I also don't relish the prospect of spending a year in ten different worlds before I can begin to experience any real, long-term growth. 

I consider going the standard route of going to Pokemon Trainer. It's a perfectly serviceable jump, but I also don't want to be a companion-type jumper and one of the big draws of Pokemon Trainer jump is the chance to snag a pokemon companion. It is a good jump, but I don't really want to be there for a decade… 

I consider my own list of potential first jumps, including ones I've actually used as parts of chains. This unusual list includes jumps as fairly rough as the jump for the old Codemasters game "Overlord", as well as ones as somewhat standard as Super Mario 64, Luigi's Mansion, and Animal Crossing. I spend several minutes, or the equivalent at least, musing over the list of somewhat safe or at least survivable first jumps before I find two that catch my eye. 

One is Generic Cartoon World, which is a fun, if powerful first jump. Some of the perks there are great for surviving jumps, and the items themselves are roughly as powerful. The other is Chronicle, which is a jump that is near and dear to my heart. A jump about three superpowered teens that offers jumpers a free superpower with no explicitly defined upper limit? That's… that's an option I can work with. 

If I could grin I'd do so as I attempt to project my decision outward. I'm unsure of the mechanics of this liminal space, but after a few seconds pass where all I do is attempt to inform whatever entity I'm speaking too of my decision, the contents of the floating text box change. 

[Alert: Decision Made

Excellent! There will be some unique conditions to this particular jump that will be options you can select to affect future movie jumps when you are designing your builds for the jumps in question. For this jump you will receive a Creative Mode Token, but only for this jump barring exceptional activities on your part in the future of your chain. Additionally you will only be here for a few months: from the beginning of August to the end of November and you cannot take items from this jump on the rest of your chain. In future parts of your chain these restrictions will be lifted. 

While you will have all of the abilities the jump offers you, you will be considered a drop-in narratively and will be… dropped in on your first day of senior year, where you will be classmates with the protagonists. 

This is partially intended as a balancing mechanism given the speed of the growth of the main perk here, and also to allow you to acclimate to jumping broadly without having you getting overly used to this setting before tearing you away again. Now please decide the essence you wish to gain for the sake of your Essential Body Modification Supplement build. You will only gain the freebies associated with the essence for the duration of this jump, but you will have the ability to make purchases that refine your body mod further in future jumps.]

The news that I can't take items with me is disappointing. There are a few exceptional items in this jump, particularly an item that allows me to share my telekinesis, but I also know of a jump that lets me buy stuff from other jumps so if I can go there someday I can just buy the cavern later. Still, not being able to take it right away is a bit of a bummer even if it's only a small disappointment amid a sea of fascinating news.

I consider the choice posed to me by whatever system is informing me as to what's going on. The Essential Body Modification Supplement is my favorite body modification document, so to see it presented to me in all of its glory is pretty sick. 

The essences I always had the most affinity for were physical ones. Back when I was… alive I was extremely fond of essences that made me a solo-fighter and allowed me to get up and endure tremendous punishment. That said I also had an affinity for evil jumpers and creating real assholes, and while I don't want to be a hero or whatever I also don't want to be a monster. 

I study the different options before me as I find that I can effortlessly recall the contents of the supplement. This is probably a supernatural effect for the convenience of whoever is being entertained by my mild scheming, to allow me to make the choice that most reflects what I've got going on inside my brain. Still, it's beneficial to me and I'm not the sort to look this particular gift horse in the mouth, at least not right now.

Of the different options I could choose from there are four that stand out to me. The essences of the assassin, brute, explorer, and healer are all pretty rad even from just the angle of their freebies. I also accidentally discover that I can access the list of perks I possess from Chronicle, just so I know what I'll already be working with. 

At first glance the assassin essence is the most intriguing. It offers a range of fascinating tools, particularly the first tier of the "Morphic Form" ability, as well as "Polyglot", it makes my social skills fiat-backed even in gauntlets, and grants me resistance to things like fear and peer pressure. 

That said, the other essences are also fascinating. The essence of the healer grants me things like energy drain and a big brain when it comes to biomedical stuff, the essence of the brute offers me the handy power-toggle ability, and the essence of the explorer eliminates my need to breathe. I mull this over for several seconds before I ultimately decide to go with the assassin essence, and as soon as I make this decision my surroundings begin to change. 

For several seconds I feel as though I am standing in the middle of a kaleidoscope, my surroundings are enormously blurry and confusing. I take nearly half a minute to allow my surroundings to gain definition and clarity and when they do I realize that I am standing in the middle of a hallway connecting a living room and a kitchen. 

In front of me is a door leading out of what I know, as a drop-in, is "My" house. I don't even have parents, but I do have a backpack… The backpack reminds me of something thoroughly unpleasant. The school bus is on the way. 

High school again… I don't love the thought of THAT part of this, but my perks should make it easy enough for me to at least do passably well in a school in the early 2010s. There's an interesting "Social Butterfly" perk that promises to help with studying, and a part of my particular body mod build helps reduce mental fatigue so I should be fine. My backpack already has some books in it, and so I can tell that a lot of stuff was smoothed over to make this transition as easy and painless as possible, which probably explains how I know that the bus is on its way.

I put my hands on myself and feel muscles I never possessed in life, and as I study my body I am quickly swept away by a storm of delight as I find that I really am not in pain anymore even now that I'm… alive, again. I take a few cautious steps and I almost cry when I find that I don't even feel any discomfort in my leg, which plagued me for almost the entire last decade of my life due to unpleasant health things. A part of me still wonders if this is a dream, but it's hard for me to ignore the growing sense of wonder and excitement I feel. 

I glance down at myself and find that I am taller than I was during my first life, and my thick arms are noticeably darker than they were when I was on the version of Earth I come from. As a Hispanic non-binary person who was masculine presenting during my first life, my new form seems to allow me to look as I feel which is nice. I can also feel the powerful strength coursing through me since my body has been amplified to peak human in every physical respect. I am wearing an outfit appropriate for a male student, some jeans and a t-shirt with a generic logo on it.

I check my pockets and find a wallet with a debit card and a folded up letter containing the information needed to use the card, some cash, and an ID. In my other pocket rests a key and a cell phone with a sticky note on its back which says its number and the passcode needed to unlock it. I quickly devote everything here to memory before taking the sticky note and the letter and cutting them up before throwing them away. 

I unlock my cell phone and glance at the time. It's early in the morning, about ninety minutes before school begins. I somehow know that the school bus is coming in a few minutes, and so I opt to go ahead and begin my day in full even though a part of me wants to experiment and see if I can already use the best part of this jump from a superpowered point of view: the telekinesis. That said, I really do want to engage with the plot of the film and so I wouldn't want to miss my first chance to interact with the characters. I exit my house and find that I live in a small suburb. 

"Yep, that's Seattle…" I remark as I study the distant metropolitan skyline. It is nothing like the small city I lived in just yesterday relative to my perspective, but it does remind me of the massive cities in Latin America that I lived in growing up. 

It is cloudy today, but it doesn't look like it'll rain. I head to the area in front of my house and turn around to study it while I wait for the school bus. 

My new home is decently small, only a one story thing, and seems to match every other house in the row. The lawn is plain and undecorated which helps differentiate it from the other houses here, and I take a second to memorize the numbers on the door and the mailbox to make it easier to get back here in the future. I also notice that there is no car in the driveway of my home, which makes sense since I didn't drive before I became a jumper and have received zero new knowledge. I get a few minutes to patiently memorize every detail I can make out, and thanks to perks I possess I doubt I'll be forgetting what I've seen anytime soon, before the bus arrives.

The thing slows to a stop right in front of my house and I step abroad and greet the bus driver, only to turn and see the motley group of teenagers who are also riding the bus. They all glance at me curiously, and some of them eye me in ways that make me roll my eyes but only internally. I don't need the first impression I make on people in this new world to be that I'm an asshole. 

I step towards the back of the bus even as the thing begins to move again. When I find a seat I slide into it with a level of dexterous finesse I did not possess during my first life. 

The bus speeds up now that I'm seated and I myself wonder what to do during this time. I could try to be social, heck that might even be a smart thing to do, but when I mix socialness and stealthiness to glance at my surroundings and eye the inhabitants of the bus I don't recognize anyone here from the film. I opt to pull out my cell phone and use it a bit before school. 

The device is decently modern, for 2012, and it reminds me of the phone I got in 2013 which remained the phone I'd use until my demise a little over a decade later. I begin to surf the net, and I take this time to familiarize myself with the world as it was a decade and some change before my death. 

As I move closer and closer to the school I find that life in 2012 feels fundamentally more serious than it did in 2024. The goofiness of the last few years, in ways that are amusing and at times horrifying, has made it hard to take the world seriously. In 2012 things feel more solid and set in stone, despite how radically different this very version of 2012 will feel in a few weeks.

By the time the bus reaches the average looking high school I've had time to reacquaint myself with a lot of trends from the middle of 2012. I've even had time to set up the shadows of various social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, complete with creating emails for myself. As everyone around me begins to get up and move to exit the bus I decide to wait until almost everyone is gone before joining that chaos. I do take advantage of the moment a student with a partially opened backpack begins to walk by and I try to reach out with my mind and move one of his open zippers. I have to suppress a joyful shout that builds in my throat when the zipper, over a foot away from me at this point, is abruptly moved by my mind! 

I CAN use telekinesis already. Now that's exciting. What a sick start to my chain.