ã€ŠWorld Resetã€‹ Chapter One - The end of the world Waking up with the sense that today is the same as every other day. My clothes lie where they were left out last night, ready for the morning. A short sleeved beige shirt ironed open at the collar and creases down the sleeves that could be used to shave with. This gets tucked into my pair of khaki trousers, a crease straight down the front of the leg. The uniform is finished of with a fabric belt coloured red, Blue and yellow which goes around my waist and the shiniest black oxford shoes. Living down the road from the local barracks is pretty handy. Being able to walk to my job as a medic in the medical centre there makes life a lot easier. After kissing my wife goodbye and grabbing a nutri-grain bar from the cupboard I head out the house. It isn''t far to camp, only a fifteen minute walk but taking a different route each day for safety can cause delays. Today my path heads left and up past the officers estate. It''s a nice estate and my morning greetings are answered readily. Everyone nearby is military or married to military. It creates a close knit community. As I''m passing some roadworks, that have been there since before posting here, a chill creeps over me. My gaze sweeps the area to and fro, unable to place my feeling of unease. My head throbs suddenly and my eyes blur, something runs across my vision. My focus zones in on it and quickly realise it''s scrolling text!

Warning! System stall detected. Progress halted. Prepare for system restart... System restart in 24:00:00...23:59:59...58...57 Survive until restart to qualify for reincarnation. Collect points to improve start parameters.

As soon as the notice registers, it disappears but the countdown moves to the corner of my vision. A cacophony of noise shatters my stunned mind. Dogs howl, cats hiss and insects start to swarm. A sharp pain registers on my arm as an insect bites me. SMACK! My other hand lands on it, no effort of avoidance made by the little shit. A red 1 Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Points ¨C 15.08 Points ¨C 16.8 System restart 04:12:18 Chapter Two - Back To Basics Awaking in a primordial blackness. A message floats before me: Congratulations! You survived the purge. Previous hands off approach proven unsustainable. System intervention increased. Reincarnation process will begin shortly. When trying to blink it becomes apparent that I have no physical form. Nothing happens as I try to move my head. The message fades away. A new one replaces it: Reincarnation will commence. Your 16.8 points have brought you back to the birth of life on your planet. You will have Five minutes to choose your reincarnation form. The message fades away and a light streaks towards me. Actually it is streaking past me. My focus shifts to it and my consciousness follows besides it. Looking closely at the lump of speeding rock and ice my vision zooms in to the very heart of the meteoroid. A clump of frozen organic matter lies dormant within. Your points give the following species options: Archaea Bacteria Eukaryotes Select one. Blink. This time it seems the system interprets my thoughts and imitates a blink. After surviving all that. My Wife, John, the insect swarms, entrapment and finally radiation poisoning. My points only allow me to choose a single cell organism! Rage tears at my insides, metaphorically, until a prompt forces me to make a snap decision. Seconds remaining ¨C 5, 4, 3... Eukaryotes. Selection accepted commencing consciousness transplant in 3...2...1... My vision follows as the meteoroid flies towards a somewhat familiar planet (the landmass looks unfamiliar but that could shift). The meteor warms as it travels through the atmosphere until finally the meteorite touches down in a large lake. Unable to observe and more, my vision zooms in to a small cell that is only just starting to stir. My new life awaits... A quick inspection of my new being reveals an instinctive knowledge of what every part of me is and does. Remembering bits from my old biology lessons but also some things are new and don''t fit closely with my memories. It takes a moment to focus closely on the nucleus and after a second a prompt flickers in my view. Inspect result ¨C Your nucleus, This holds your consciousness. It also allows you to give specific instructions to the cell. You have gained the Inspect skill. Grants you information about objects or entities you Inspect. Gaining your first skill has unlocked your Status sheet. Think status to call up your Status. Oh shit. It seems just like a game. Is this what the system meant by increasing its intervention? Hmm as the saying goes Improvise, Adapt and Overcome. Better get used to my new life or it may not last long. Status.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Name	Stan	Race	Eukaryotes
Age	<1day	Stage	Single cell
Energy	10/10	Mana	0/0
Energy re-gen	1 /s	Mana re-gen	N/A

Oh look. my name stayed the same. I''m Stan by the way... Hahahaha... Stan the cell... Stan Cell. Get it? Oh well. Other than my name my race is as I chose it. Stage being single cell which suggests progression can occur along the evolutionary path... How far can I progress? Energy seems like stamina? Would running out of energy kill me? Or would I fall asleep for rest? Since I''m now a cell it should be assumed all my functions require energy to continue so my guess is running out of energy right now means death. The final thing on the status at the moment is mana... Mana?! Does that imply magic now exists? Why tempt me cruel world? Showing me something so incredible exists but is out of reach. There''s sure to be more things my status will show as they are discovered but to show this from the start... why? Finishing up running through these new developments leads me back to what I was doing. Taking stock of the situation. Back to my single cell and to take a look at the rest of my parts. Inspect result ¨C Mitochondria, The power station of your cell. Provides energy from metabolising oxygen and nutrients. Inspect result ¨C Ribosome, Used to synthesise Proteins or ''Building blocks'' for your cell. Smiling because they function pretty closely to my memories. It''s been dumbed down a little though by the system. Ribosomes didn''t build bricks to develop the cell. New life, new world, new rules. Improvise, adapt and overcome. Floating around my awareness is caught by small bits of debris floating past me always seeming to flow around me. As one piece gets very close my flagella kick out and touch it. I feel a significant drop in energy and when I check it''s down to 8/10. My cell membrane brushes the piece of debris and draws out a stream of matter that begins to float around my cell. It moves gradually from one organelle to another. As some of it passes through the mitochondria and my energy jumps back up to 10/10. Almost at the same time the ribosomes get to work and ''pull'' on my energy dropping it back down to 9/10. These processes fight with each other until equilibrium returns and my energy hit max again. A small store of proteins is gathered in a small stockpile. It reminds me almost of a city building game. You have to take in resources (Osmosis) process them through buildings (Organelles like mitochondria and ribosomes) and are left with energy and resources (proteins). A vibration informs me that something has changed on my status and a thought brings it up:

Name	Stan	Race	Eukaryotes
Age	<1day	Stage	Single cell
Growth Points	4/20	Points needed to advance	25
Energy	10/10	Mana	0/0
Energy re-gen	1 /s	Mana re-gen	N/A

It seems that processing nutrients from the environment provides growth points to advance. Looking at my growth points causes a message to appear: Growth points allow you to progress. They can be used to advance to the next stage or to develop your current body further. Considering this for a moment, two cells means two of everything, two mitochondria, two ribosomes, hell even two nucleus. At the same time I''ll have to move twice the mass and support twice the systems. Increasing the viability of this cell for less cost would surely be the better option initially. It takes only a thought to direct the growth points to construct a second mitochondria. They drift away from the storage and begin to knit together. After a few minutes a brand new shiny mitochondria sits besides the first one. A quick peak at my status shows my energy capacity has doubled although some of my actual energy was used in the process. It now sits at 5/20. Having the structure won''t actually produce any energy to fill the potential it gave me until there''s something for it to process. I casually kick my flagella at another bit of debris but the fluid shifts and causes me to miss! Energy 3/20. It flashes at me and an indicator appears in the corner of my vision. A little flashing lightning bolt. One more mistake like that and it''s over. Focus Stan. This last action is the last thing you could do... Taking aim at a new piece of debris approaching, my flagella coiled ready. It gets closer. Almost time... Push!... Chapter Three - Waste Management... Or Death My body flails towards the debris only for it to slide sideways due to my displacement. Panic sets in as it slips smoothly around my cell. Before my emotions break my very small wake draws in the debris and finally it brushes against my membrane. Crisis averted. The nutrients flow in and my organelles quickly get to work breaking it all down. Taking note that the Ribosomes don''t kick in this time as my energy rises to a solid 16/20. They must only kick in at a certain threshold. While thinking this it pops up: Protein synthesis threshold 90% energy There''s a slider along the bottom of the notification and it becomes apparent that the setting can be adjusted. Leaving it at the default value seems sensible at the moment since my recent near miss. Energy should be kept up. Back to grabbing more debris then... ***** What felt like many days went by as debris is gathered, converted to growth points and spent on either mitochondria or ribosomes. My cell is looking pretty bloated now with six mitochondria and four ribosomes but something seems off. It has gotten a lot easier to hit debris and it''s almost instinctive to direct myself into nearby debris. My body twitches again and more nutrients flow into my cell. My unease makes me attentive now, my gaze watches the nutrients absorb into the mitochondria, energy tops back up to full but my vision notices something new. Little bits are released by the mitochondria. Watching these travel around my cell draws my attention to even more of them all seeming to congregate at a tiny organelle. Lysosome ¨C The recycling centre of the cell. This little beauty recycles the waste from other organelles turning it back into useful components or, if unusable, expelling waste. Without these your cell would become acidic and reduce productivity. Next stop, Status!

Name	Stan	Race	Eukaryotes
Age	3 days	Stage	Single cell
Growth Points	15/20	Division Cost	125Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Energy	54/54	Mana	0/0
Energy re-gen	6 /s	Mana re-gen	N/A

It becomes apparent the effect my lack of waste management is having. The mitochondria energy stores are being impacted. Burning through my growth points and creating four more of these lysosomes drops my energy back down to 34/54. Once the proteins have done their bit, four shiny new organelles glisten within my cell walls. Nothing further seems to happen. My energy max is still at 54 and my cell looks as bloated as ever, if not more so because of the new organelles. Then it becomes clear that the toxins in my cell are migrating towards these new organelles but will take some time. Damn osmosis and your mechanics. After some time my cell looks more natural and healthier. Time to get back to the grind. ***** At ten mitochondria, ten lysosomes and four ribosomes a new message pops up. It was just after my last mitochondria formed raising my energy up to a maximum of one hundred. A little goal of mine. New cell parts are now available! Boredom of the grind was setting in so this was golden news. Pulling up the growth menu showed the new options clear as day: Mitochondria Ribosome Lysosome Flagella Vacuole Chloroplast Myofibril Dendrite Axon Telodendria These options provide a huge insight into future growth potential. It soon becomes apparent that becoming a multicell organism will allow me to specialise individual cells and create biological structures. It wouldn''t take much to create a nerve cell connected to a flanged muscle cell to pull me along much faster however this would use more energy. This could be offset by long cells with many flagella to scoop up debris as my body rockets past. If this is how evolution happened last time around it is obvious now why nature had so many specialised and complicated structures. It seems crazy to think it could have been random accident. Thinking about the potential now at my fingertips it''s clear that some planning is needed. Should I spend a bit more time as a single cell and develop my foundation? Should I rush to get to multistage? It is all a lot to think about. On the one hand more energy would provide a buffer. It would also double as my cells split although looking at my status:

Name	Stan	Race	Eukaryotes
Age	<1day	Stage	Single cell
Growth Points	0/20	Division Cost	250
Energy	83/100	Mana	0/0
Energy re-gen	10 /s	Mana re-gen	N/A

My cell division cost has skyrocketed and it isn''t possible to store enough growth points to divide my cell. Looking at the new options from the growth menu and discarding them one by one until... Vacuole ¨C The storage centre of the cell. Each vacuole will increase growth point storage by 50. Without them you will find things just float around your plasma. Perfect. Just need to get the growth points to build a few of them too. One component that drew my eye while looking through the options was the chloroplast. They never occurred in animal cells in the last world. Does this mean I''m a plant cell? There''s no cell wall in my cell though and have mitochondria and look more like an animal cell. Experiments may be in order but first Vacuoles!