There were a lot of things that Tamra Mors should have been enjoying her senior year of high school. Things that most regular 17-year-olds got to enjoy and experience. She had been looking forward to the dances, especially Prom, and the other myriad school events that she felt would shape fond memories of this crucial time in her life. Things that she felt would shape her as a person, that she would look back on fondly.
She wasn’t expecting surgery after surgery. She wasn’t expecting to be completely paralyzed from just below her chest from a complete spinal cord injury. Instead of partying with friends, she was adjusting to the mortification of having someone help her with a daily bowel program. Instead of preparing for college or daydreaming about her future, she was learning to cope with constant pain. “It’s nearly 2050, you’d think they could handle this shit better!” she could vaguely remember her father yelling at the hospital staff sometime after her second surgery when they realized nothing had been fixed.
People pitied her, which was bad, but even worse were the people that seemed shocked by how burned out and despondent she was. It seemed that people had an expectation that she be upbeat and full of hope, and all because she was a slightly preppy looking teenage girl. She could hardly keep count of how many people had told her that she was young and healthy and would adapt and could live a full life even with her new disability and blah blah blah… The accident had left her bitter and she saw no point in plastering a fake smile on her face for any of them. She wanted to rage, she wanted to cry all day every day and scream non-stop. But mostly she wanted to walk.
Instead, she mourned. At first, she assumed it was for all the things she couldn’t do and wouldn’t have in the future. But as her last surgery approached, she felt a strange certainty that she was going to die. It was scheduled a few months before her classmates were set to graduate, and some of them had come to wish her luck and express how much they’d missed her through the schoolyear. She had the feeling they’d left that visit more disturbed than reassured. She couldn’t help it.
On the day of her surgery, a part of her wanted to go into a full blown panic. A part of her didn’t want to die at all. Certainly life, even this miserable half-life, was better than death? But as the procedure began and the anesthesia took effect, she felt a strange sense of relief.
To be done with it. To finally be done with it.
And she died.
I don’t remember waking. I found myself standing in the center of a vast empty space.
Standing.
It had been so long since I had stood by myself that I had the instant feeling that I was in a dream. I looked down at my feet to see that they were indeed supporting my weight. I lifted one foot. I hopped in place. A simple thing. A thing I had never expected to be able to do again. I had to be dreaming. But I could feel everything so vividly. The pressure of my weight on my feet, the way it shifted to one foot and the other, the way my body moved to maintain my balance. A thing that had been so natural for so much of my life before it had been so cruelly stolen from me.
[Welcome.]
The word floated in front of me. I twisted my head and it followed my field of vision, half transparent but still clearly visible. “Welcome?” I read aloud, confused by everything that was happening.
[You have died.]
I froze as I read the words.
Of course. I remembered going into surgery. I remembered how strongly I had felt that I was going to die. And I had. I felt strangely numb.
[In accordance with the Health Finance Recuperation Act of 2038, your body and brain have been claimed as property. You and/or your legal guardians have signed notating awareness of and compliance to the Act prior to your receiving care.]
I frowned. I vaguely remembered my older sister getting mad at my parents about this. She called it the “Grave Robber Act,” which I guess is what a lot of the college kids had started calling it once it went into effect. My parents had warily explained to her that signing it was the only way to afford my care at all – besides, it was almost impossible to carry health insurance or find a hospital to provide care without signing an agreement to the Act these days. In the years since it had been passed, it had become just another thing you got used to seeing and signing at the doctor’s office. “But what happens if she dies?” I remember her yelling. I remember my mom bursting into tears and leaving the room, simply saying “I can’t.” I remember my dad firmly telling her that I was strong and I wasn’t going to die.
So much for that. Sorry, Dad.
[The Health Finance Recuperation Act gives your health insurance provider or the hospital organization associated with your health provider the legal right to claim and sell the remains of the deceased unless the next of kin can afford to pay a minimum percentage of care costs within 72 hours of death. As the 72 hour mark has been exceeded, your remains passed into the care of your insurance provider, who has proceeded to sell your brain to Black Hole Entertainment.]
I stared at the words blankly, trying to comprehend them. 72 hours? I’d been dead for three days. Maybe even over three days, depending on how fast I’d been sold. But if I was dead, how was I… thinking? Standing? Feeling? Reading a message stating that I was complying to some stupid legal act?
[Again, welcome! We offer an exciting and unique opportunity to your remains here at Black Hole Entertainment! Black Hole is a new company that is exploring the next exciting generation of modern gaming – full immersion gaming! In order to safely adapt our new gaming system for human use, vigorous testing is required. Thanks to advancements in brain activity preservation, we have been able to bring your consciousness into existence within our computers mostly intact. Here, we will be able to test the effect of our games on human brains.]
“Mostly intact?” What the fuck did that mean? I shook my head, but paused in the act. Was what I was seeing and feeling physically even real? If what I was reading was right, I was in a computer – I was just a memory of a dead person in a computer. What did it mean that I felt like myself, standing, shaking my head in response to this? It hurt my head to even think of it.
I closed my eyes for a moment as I tried to process this. Strangely, the words remained floating in front of my lack of vision.
[We understand that some questions may remain, especially in regards to ethics and morality. You will be provided with counseling opportunities to ask those questions in the future. For now, we offer condolences, and with understanding for how difficult this moment may be for you, we will offer you this: the choice of which game world you will navigate in your afterlife.]
I sighed and opened my eyes again, although I suppose the act itself made no difference. I didn’t really feel fully invested in this, but I couldn’t think of anything that I could do about it for the time being. I was stuck. There was no point in overthinking any of it, or agonizing about any of it.
Besides… I could walk. I had a functioning body. Even if it wasn’t real, it was so much better than my existence had been over the past several months.
[Your choices include three stable and well tested game zones – a generic hack and slash fantasy world, a rollicking space adventure, or a modern day life sim!]
I paused as I considered my choices, my eyes flickering over the options several times. A life sim might give me a taste of everything I had missed since the accident, but the other options didn’t sound too bad either. After a beat, more words followed. [Owing to the more intact nature of your consciousness, we can also offer two additional game worlds. These game worlds are still being strenuously tested, so they may require feedback as a condition of use. These worlds include a survival horror and a cozy casual isekai game.]
“Are these choices final?” I wondered out loud.
[They don’t have to be.]
I jerked my head back as the words responded to me. That was… unexpected.
[You can be given the chance to choose a different world in the future. Please note that choosing a new game world will require you to create a new character unique to that world, so only limited skills and equipment will transfer, and level advancement may possibly be reset.]
“Character?”
[Please select a world to enter character creation.]
I wasn’t sure how to make my selection, but the words seemed to be responding to my voice. Tentatively, I said, “Cozy, casual game world?” It came out more like a nervous question, and I hated how uncertain and child-like I sounded in the moment.
[Entering character creation.]
The world shifted and brightened around me. I had, for a moment, a strange out of body sensation. I realized that in a way I was still myself – and looking at myself. I raised an arm, and saw my arm raise in response. I turned my head in the direction that I was watching myself from, and was aware of two things at once – that I could not see my “out of body” self, and that I was now staring directly into my own hazel eyes.
I shivered. I watched my body visibly tense and shake briefly like a chill had caught me, my expression disturbed. This was kind of freaking me out. Not being used to seeing myself in anything other than pictures or mirrors, I took a moment to examine how I looked. The scars and hollowed out haggardness that had defined my looks after the accident were gone – now I looked as I had beforehand. Slightly freckled, hazel eyed, dirty blonde hair. I leaned in to get a good look at my nose, which I had always felt was a touch too large. Being able to get a good look at my profile, I wasn’t reassured. I sighed.
I became aware of blocks floating off to the side. Menu options of some sort. My out-of-body self shifted closer to the Menu, and I looked over what sorts of options I was being given. Apparently, there were three main starter packs for this cozy world – farmer, clerk, or alchemist. I was tempted to choose farmer – I had gotten sucked into old farming sim games a couple of times, and found them to be calming time wasters. I reached out – only to realize my out-of-body self had no hands, and my self behind me was the one waving my hand vaguely forward at nothing. Then I spent a couple of minutes trying to maneuver my self towards the menu. I got close despite the awkwardness of first-third-person navigation, only to realize that my body wasn’t even touching anything on the menu. My hands went floating through them like they weren’t there.
I tried saying, “Farmer?” But nothing happened.
[Focus.]
The word popped into existence in front of me and then faded away slowly. Frowning, I focused as I looked across the menu, and at the last second decided on alchemist. It highlighted to indicate that it had been selected.
So I was going to be an alchemist in a cozy casual isekai game world of some sort. Selecting the starter pack for my class gave me a literal pack filled with certain items – some alchemical materials and a cloak with a pentagram symbol on the back. After that, I was able to select clothes and accessories.
At first, I wondered if I was going to be given a time limit for this character creation stage. But there was no timer and nothing seemed to be urging me on, so I took my time. After all, there was no reason to not enjoy my afterlife at my own pace. I went through every clothing style available and experimented with the customization options. A lot of it seemed to be very Ren Faire inspired. Eventually I settled on a simple longish skirt with a laced bodice, and spent a ridiculous amount of time switching between a lilac or a sage color scheme. I finally settled on sage.
After choosing my clothes and accessories, I spent a little bit of time walking around my body, studying how I looked. I frowned at my lack of cleavage. It wasn’t something I cared about often, but sometimes I found myself being self-conscience about it, especially when I chose clothing that dipped low at the neckline. As I was thinking about it, my appearance shifted, my breasts becoming slightly larger.
I felt my eyes go wide with surprise.
Then I spent the entire next hour focusing on the little things I had always hated about my appearance. The moles I didn’t like got shifted or removed, my freckles disappeared, my cheekbones shifted up slightly. My nose got much smaller. I shifted between curvy to stick thin and back again, completely uncertain of which way was better. I shifted through every shade of hair color available, settling on a blonde a touch lighter than my dishwater waves, and tried every unusual eye color they had available. Hazel was a lot more boring than glowing, reflective golden cat eyes. After a while, I looked like a completely different person. Generically pretty.
I stared for a long time at the end result.
And realized I kind of hated it.
I felt a moment of panic, wondering if I’d ever be able to change me back into me, and focused on finding a way to reset my appearance. As I thought it, it happened – an option flashed to the side that would allow me to switch back to what I had created. I looked at myself critically.
Finally, I decided on a few small changes – clearer skin, slightly thinner, hair and eyes a shade lighter than normal, and the nose only a touch smaller. I still looked like me, at least. “Okay, this feels right,” I said out loud.
[Finalize changes and enter world?] the text appeared, as though in reaction to my spoken words.
One last thing, I thought. And I added a huge scar across my midsection.
I guess that one didn’t really matter. It was hard to see it because it was always covered by clothes. I would be the only one that knew it was there. But it had been present over the last several months of my life, and had been part of why I had died. I felt like I would need it somehow. As a reminder, if nothing else.
“Okay. I’m ready now.”
[…One last step…]
The scenery changed. Instead of observing myself I was observing a little glowing ball of light.
[Answer these three questions…]
[What is your favorite color?]
I frowned, a little confused. “Umm… red.” The light shifted, crimson tinged for a moment.
[What is your greatest hope?]
My jaw dropped. I felt immediately annoyed at this question. What was the point in asking a dead person what their greatest hope was? I understood this was probably meant to be aimed at a living video game player. But hope did not seem warranted at this point. I crossed my arms and shifted my weight, feeling uncomfortable. “How about coming back to life?” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
The light shifted again.
[What is your deepest regret?]
“Dying.” I had meant for the word to be bitterly snapped, but I found myself strangely choking on it. Tears welled into my eyes and I hastily blinked them back.
Being emotional about any of this also didn’t seem warranted at this point. I remembered how ready to die I had felt as the anesthesia had taken effect, how tired of living in my broken, useless body I had been. Even this non-life after life would be better. It had to be better.
The light shifted again, darkening slightly.
[Thank you.]
The words faded. The light faded. The darkness around me faded.
I found myself standing in brightly lit day, in the middle of a dirt road. The weather was warm, but not too warm – a breeze swayed through a nearby field, and a few fluffy tufts of clouds hung in the brilliantly blue sky. I gaped at the peaceful scene, my arms dropping to my side as I turned slowly to look around me. Yellow flowers dotted the fields along gently sloping hills, butterflies flitting between them. Far in the distance I could see a small village, and beyond that, the purple silhouette of a distant mountain range.
Should I head toward the village? Or go in the opposite direction? Or travel to the mountains? As I considered my options, a voice cleared itself behind me. It was high pitched, almost childlike, and slightly imperious. “Ahem!”
I turned and looked down. Whatever it was, it was small and round and almost puffy looking. I think it was supposed to look like a fantasy game slime, but instead of being translucent or jelly-like it looked like a marshmallow. It stared up at me with large lavender-hued eyes. “Am I supposed to kill you?” I wondered out loud. “For the experience?”
It narrowed its eyes and harrumphed angrily, bouncing slightly in indignation. “Kill me! What kind of greeting is that for your most loyal companion. How rude!”
“Companion?” I eyed the creature dubiously, taking in the red hue of its marshmallow-like skin. Was this what the questions had been about? Creating my own little helper… whatever? “What are you?”
“I’m a BOAI – a specialized bot that is here to help you. I am mostly here to create a record and provide feedback to the devs, but I can also assist in some small ways. They’ve found that implementing us helps the recently deceased acclimate to the game environments more efficiently.” I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a little girl or a little boy from the voice. It kept bouncing as it spoke, almost as though it were excited to explain its role.
“I don’t know what any of that means,” I said. “What does BOAI even stand for?”
The puff stopped bouncing for a moment, its eyes going wide. “You know… I have no idea!” It began to bounce faster suddenly, speaking a million miles a minute. “Isn’t that funny? I have a general knowledge of my purpose here, and I know I’m supposed to follow you everywhere, absolutely everywhere, you go, but it’s also like I don’t really know anything at all! I feel like a complete blank slate!”
I raised my hands, gesturing for it to slow its bouncing. “Okay, blank slate. Calm down. What do I call you?”
It froze again and stared up at me, its eyes suddenly shimmering with barely contained tears. “Oh-Em-Gee!” it said suddenly, with great emotion. “I don’t have a name! It’s like not having an identity!” It shifted forward and up in an almost pleading motion. I resisted the urge to take a step back. “I know! You should name me! What do you want to call me?”
My mind froze. I hated thinking up names for things. “How about Slate?” I grasped, thinking of how I had just called it blank slate so casually and Slate being name-sounding. I instantly felt like it didn’t fit at all. It wasn’t slate colored after all. It vigorously moved the top front of its form up and down – nodding?
“Slate! I love it.” It stopped and tilted slightly to the side, like a curious puppy. “The system says that you’re named Tamra. Are you renaming your character for this world? Can I call you Tam-Tam?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Just Tamra.” It seemed easier to stick with what I had than trying to come up with another name for this character immediately.
It nodded again. “Okay, Tam! Ra! Tam! Tam! Where should we go?”
I frowned. The way it had repeated Tam was not convincing me that it was going to do as I requested, but I decided to let it go in the moment. I glanced back toward where I had seen the village – settled as it was between us and the mountains. Being directly asked did settle the matter for me, I guess. “We’ll head to the village,” I said. I turned and began to walk, following the road. Slate hopped by my side, making soft boing boing boing noises as it went. It was almost too cutesy, but that was the nature of cozy games, so I figured this was par for the course. I wondered what Slate would have looked like in one of the other game worlds, or if it was always going to be the same. “Since I chose alchemist, I assume I just find a place to settle in and start making potions. Maybe to sell?” I glanced down at Slate. It made little noises of agreement, but didn’t say anything one way or the other. “Does that sound about right for what I’m supposed to do for this game?” I asked it more directly.
“Oh!” it squeaked as it gently bounced along beside me. “I have no clue! I just follow you.”
“Like a loyal companion?” I noted dryly.
“Or a stalker!” it responded, a touch too cheerfully. I nodded thoughtfully. We continued in silence for a moment, but it didn’t last long. “MY GOSH, it is beautiful out here, don’t you think? It’s definitely spring, yes? This seems about right for everything I know about spring… warm weather, flowers, pretty butterflies! Isn’t it just wonderful! Do you think it’s always spring or do you think it cycles through the seasons? Do you think they have seasonal events? I think it’d be exciting to see like… flower trees. Loads and loads of flowering trees. Can we go find some flowering trees? What do you call a flowering tree place? A grove?”
I shook my head. “Do you not know anything about the game world here?”
“Nope! Not a thing! Just my stalking mission!”
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t know any more than you do.” I wondered what the point of having it here with me was then. Was it just recording my every move? Did I really want it following me after all? Slate continued to comment on the nearby environment as we went, and I tuned it out after a while, offering vague agreements and nods. This didn’t seem to deter it at all, and it continued to happily chatter away.
The road took us closer to a forest, though not through it – we stayed on its outer edge. I stared into the shadowy undergrowth of the trees, wondering if I would eventually explore these woods. “What was that!?” Slate suddenly stopped, the back of its body spiking like the raised hackles of a cat. It focused its purple eyes on the nearby woods, its body tense and shivering. I followed its focus, noting that the brush there was shaking.
Before I could respond, a pair of squirrels exited, running towards us. “Squirrels,” I said, confused by their sudden appearance. I wondered why they were sprinting toward us, if there was some cause for alarm. Was something chasing them?
“Squirrels!” Slate squeaked in joy just as one tackled it, sending the puff rolling and screaming into the grass.
I almost laughed until the other squirrel bodily tackled me and sent me sprawling as well. The damn thing was weighty, way heavier than a squirrel should have been – it bit, and I screamed at how much it hurt. It didn’t feel like I was being harassed by a small rodent. The violence behind the attack felt more like being mauled by a large dog. Disoriented by this discordance between what I was expecting and what I was experiencing, I tried to fling the thing away. I kicked it back – it hardly moved – and I pushed forward and managed to pin it against the ground with my foot. I almost felt bad to put all my weight on it. I lifted my arm to look at the bite. The damn thing had taken a huge chunk out of my arm, and blood dripped freely.
It trilled a tiny squeaky growl at me, its small paws gripping my foot. I let out a startled screech as it easily flung me off. I landed bodily on the ground and began to crawl away immediately, trying to remember if I had any starter weapons amongst my inventory items – and wondering how I even accessed that. I hadn’t even thought of trying to figure out game mechanics yet, and I was already in a fight. Stupid stupid stupid, I chastised myself as I turned to look back. I could see that the squirrel had launched itself in the air to pounce on my prone form…
I screamed and raised an arm to protect myself. Mid-jump, a ball of fire slammed into the squirrel, incinerating it. It howled in rage as it perished, the sound eerie and drawn out. I looked up to see a man advancing on the other squirrel, who had let off chasing Slate to attack the newcomer instead. He easily sliced it in two with a sword. Slate gave a victory whoop and bounced back towards us. “Thank you, thank you!”
The man nodded briefly to Slate and then turned, walking toward me. He sheathed the sword and offered a hand to help me up. I frowned, and reluctantly accepted, feeling suddenly shy and awkward. He was tall and thin, with a posture that suggested he had spent more of his time hunched over in a cubicle than wielding a sword. He had messy brown hair and light brown eyes. For the most part, he looked exceeding average, except for a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken once before.
I never felt comfortable interacting with strangers, and that was before every new adult I met was there to poke and prod and ask questions as they examined my charts and pretended to care. And mostly I could sit and let my parents or my sister do all the talking. “You must be new,” he said gruffly. “Most that have been in the system for a while know to avoid the testing environments. Damn squirrels still have wolf stats…”
“Wolf?” I mumbled numbly, thinking about how the squirrel had howled when it died. It had sounded remarkably like a wolf.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty deadly bug,” he said. He lifted my arm to get a better look at the bite, gently wiping some of the blood away, and then pulled a bottle from his bag filled with a bubbly reddish liquid that looked like strawberry soda. He uncorked it and handed it to me. “Drink this. Healing potion.” I did as instructed – it tasted more like a cream soda of some sort, fizzy and cool and pleasant. First a chill ran down my spine, and it felt alarmingly like I had been dunked in ice water, but the sensation was gone as quick as it had happened. The pain was gone. I held my arm up and watched the wound mend before my eyes, leaving only the faintest trace on my arm. It wasn’t really like a scar – it was almost like the skin was so new that it hadn’t tanned evenly with the surrounding skin.
“A bug,” I said, my voice deadpan. I shook my head and handed the bottle back to him, which he took. It disappeared from his hand, stashed into some inventory that I didn’t know how to access yet.
“You saved us, sir!” Slate said as it joined us, boinging up even higher to meet the stranger’s height.
He nodded to Slate again, not seeming to want to speak to it much. I realized he didn’t have his own companion, but I didn’t comment. “How long have you been here?” he asked me.
“I just got here,” I said.
“Then you’re lucky I found you. I have a warning – if you die in the game, you cease to exist. It’s perma-death. So be careful.”
“What?” I gaped at him, surprised by this information.
“Another bug,” he said grimly. “The reason we’re here, really. They haven’t been able to work around it for any of the games, which is why immersion gaming is still in the testing phase. The brain believes everything it sees, so when you die in the game… it believes you’ve died for real, and your body ceases to function.” He gestured toward the road. “We should head to the town. You’re not supposed to attract aggro from anything stronger than a slug, but they’ve got messed up stats on more than just the squirrels in these testing environments.”
I had a million questions from what he had said, but quietly processed the fact that I could die here as we started walking along the road. He seemed at ease as he walked, but I noticed that he kept an eye trained on the underbrush of the forest. “Is the town the only safe space? What if I had decided to walk in the opposite direction?” I wondered out loud.
“The game world here isn’t huge, and the town is the only populated area. If you had walked in the opposite direction, you would have eventually hit an invisible wall.”
I nodded. “Okay. Is there any way to know when you’re approaching the edge of the game world? Does it look different?”
“No, it looks just the same. Sometimes you can access a map, but some games make you find one first. The map usually has the playable space marked. Otherwise, the only way to know is to walk directly into it.”
A map. I would have to eventually ask him how to access inventory items like he had with the disappearing potion bottle, and how to access maps as well. I suspected it was the same degree of focus, or maybe some sort of focus to bring up a user interface or a menu. But I also realized that I had missed out on asking one important question. “What’s your name?”
“James,” he said simply. He seemed to hesitate a moment, glancing over at me before he said. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself, it’s a bit awkward talking to a kid. Feels kind of wrong? People side eye you like you’re a pedophile when you chat with anyone under 21… well, back in real life. So it seemed weird to ask your name.”
“Tamra,” I offered. I wanted to ask how he had died, but somehow that seemed inappropriate. I let my gaze drift off across the field and instead asked, “How do they put this level of detail into the game graphics?”
“It’s mostly thanks to your own brain,” he said. “A benefit of immersion gaming if they can get it to really work. All they really need to do is program a basic game environment – they tell your brain what it should see, and it fills in the details. As a result, some things are a little different from user to user. As an example, these flowers,” he gestured toward the flowers that dotted the field. “The program tells your brain they’re Black-Eyed Susans, a yellow wildflower. If you’ve seen a Black-Eyed Susan before, your brain fills in the appropriate details. If you haven’t, your brain creates a concept of what it must look like based on ‘yellow wildflower.’ The same with the butterflies. For other things, there is a basic model created, but those models would look more like old school video game graphics when viewed from outside the game. Inside the game, there are a list of details to feed your brain about the model, which makes it more realistic in your perception, giving it a texture or even a smell – things that you wouldn’t be able to perceive while playing a traditional game…”
I nodded as I listened to him talk. “How do you know all this?” I asked.
His expression darkened. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Okay. Fair enough.” I turned to stare at the field as we walked on in silence. I found myself staring at the flowers. I had heard of Black-Eyed Susans before, I was pretty sure I had even seen them, but I was awful at identifying flowers. I had never been shown a flower and specifically told it was a Black-Eyed Susan. I wondered if how they looked here to me was actually how they looked. It made me feel a little sad for a moment, though I couldn’t place why I felt that way. I guess… knowing that I’d never know for sure.
If that made any sense.
Slate boinged along beside us. As the silence extended, it began to hum gently to itself, a huge smile plastered across its face. It seemed to be enjoying the day, and the fact that we had survived our first encounter. Very soon, the humming became less gentle as Slate began to fully rock out with little vocalizations. “Do do do do do dooo! Yeah!” it said to itself as it bounced happily, twirling in circles at the apex of every boing.
“What are you singing?” I asked, half amused at its antics.
“Sandstorm,” James muttered.
“Darude!” Slate said happily.
“How do you know that song?” I said, chuckling softly at the look on James’s face. He was not as amused as I was by any of this.
“No clue!” Slate said, still happily do do do do’ing to itself. James sighed. I had the feeling he regretted saving us just a little bit.
We reached the village before nightfall. It didn’t feel like it had been very long, and I wondered out loud if the day and night cycle synced up with the real world. “It depends on which game you’re in. This one doesn’t though. I think the game day is only 2 hours long, and the night is the same.”
We stood looking into the village. It was almost idyllic, with cobblestone streets. Children laughed as they ran across our path, and Slate went bouncing after them several feet before turning to roll back to me. Since it was getting late in the day, a few stalls were packing up. I glanced at James, feeling a bit awkward. “So what do I do now?”
He nodded down the street. “You should come to an inn down that way and they can get you settled into the game opening properly. Talk to the innkeeper, stay the night, and that will trigger the intro. Once you play through the intro, you should be free to change to another game world. It’s a little harder to die in the more established games, so you should be safer there. Especially the life sim.”
I felt a strange surge of panic. “Are you not going to stay with me? I had a lot of questions.”
He eyed me warily. “I wasn’t really planning to.” He studied my face for a moment and sighed. “I can get you to the inn. I’ll give you an hour to ask whatever questions you want. But then I’m going to go, and you’ll be on your own.”
I felt a little better about that. “Yes, please. Thank you.”
An hour later it was the middle of the game night and James had shown me the basics of the HUD as it worked in this world. We had ordered a meal that he paid for, as I hadn’t earned any in game currency yet. I was drinking a strawberry milk that was so creamy and frothy it was almost more like a strawberry milkshake. Slate had ordered a chocolate milk, and was still happily chugging through the fifth one.
Apparently, the HUD and how it operated was similar in all the game worlds, but the options were different based on what sort of game play the world went for. In order to not blind the user, the HUD was always the same strange semi-transparency that I had noticed from the text that had addressed me when I first appeared here. The transparency didn’t really stop you from being able to read and understand any of the text. It had something to do with using your brain’s own spatial awareness, though I didn’t fully understand it.
James stood from the table. “I think you know enough of the basics to be able to get on with it yourself for now. I’m going to take off.”
I jumped up from my chair. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be by myself – as annoying as it was to admit, I didn’t want to be left unattended without adult help. But I forced myself to nod. “Will we run into each other again?” I wondered out loud.
He shrugged. “More than likely. It’s not a huge game world if you stay, but I don’t recommend it since it’s not safe yet. And I travel between the worlds every now and then, so we might trip over each other some other time.”
“Okay. Well…” I held out my hand. “Thank you for saving me, and giving me the basics.”
He hesitantly shook my hand and smiled. “Nice meeting you, Tamra. If you sleep in the bed, it’ll shift you to morning, and the intro will initiate. Good luck, and be careful.” I watched him walk out of the inn.
“Okay, Slate. Let’s turn in for the night.”
The puff burped as it finished its drink and bounced happily bounced off the table. “What a day, what a day!” it chirped.
mehryment 