“Leave my nervous system alone … ,” he said out loud, his initially vexing tone trailing off into confused uncertainty.

Omar was still sitting on his couch, one bare foot on the hardwood floor, when several somethings changed at once. Probably. Actually, he wasn't the least bit sure because all the changes that he noticed, were trivial, and could be easily explained away.

The couch felt a little stiffer than usual, as if he had been sitting on it for awhile. Which he sort of had been.

The lighting in the room was different, almost as if the day went from clear and sunny, to partly cloudy. Which could have happened.

The floor beneath his foot, which had been cool to the touch, was now neither colder nor warmer than his foot. But that is what he'd expect if his foot warmed up that spot of the floor, or the floor cooled down his foot.

These were all things that normally could, and often did, change on their own, but usually not at the same time, and never ever so abruptly.

It was enough to make him look around wearily, glancing first left, then right, and then behind him to assure himself that he didn't just wake up in a stranger's house. But he had already awoken, a bare few moments ago, in what was certainly his apartment. The strange discontinuity left him with an eerie sensation that something was abnormally weird; with he himself being, of course, his definition of “normal weirdness.”

“Then again,” he thought, with little concern, “I supposedly just had my nervous system ‘reconfigured,’ ” except that it wasn't particularly introspective; his thought being nothing more than a simple statement of “supposed fact.”

“But why is it so … quiet,” he began to ask, normally at first, but then lowered his voice to something more appropriate. “What time is it, anyways? Wasn't it supposed to be around 1:30 or 2pm or something,” he recalled, thinking about recent events. “The time seems wrong,” he decided, as the simplest explanation. “When I got up, … or, uhm. … When I got up the first time, it was still the same afternoon—like I wasn't out for very long—but now it looks like it's closer to dinner time than lunch time. When did that happen?”

Before he could get up, Omar saw something flutter or flicker ahead of him. Thinking it was a fly, he waved his hand in front of his face to ward it off, but soon he realized that the flickering was in the heads-up display of his new interface.

After the visual and audio messages about both his nervous system and the tutorial, Omar just assumed that his interface had finished “installing” itself. This assumption, he knew, might be skewed by the searing pain that marked the beginning of that “installation” process.

However, like most new players, Omar was wrong. The installation process was in fact, not over. The authors of those messages implied as much through their carefully chosen words, along with the timing of events. At least, that's what they believed.

The messages had first told Omar that his nervous system was being reconfigured, and then eventually, something had finished. Most humans would consider that to be inhumanly misleading. The authors of those messages technically knew this, but their understanding only went so far as to find the incongruity to be hilarious. This is perhaps, unsurprising, given that the authors were members of two very different alien species; one being the machine-based AMIs, and the other being the Gliesians, a gigantic swarm of organic, puppy-sized tentacle monsters. This sort of wordplay is much loved by both the AMIs and the Gliesians ever since they learned it from humanity.

Regardless of those details, Omar recognized the telltale signs of an obviously glitchy interface, and yet he didn't complain. He had to go and make lunch next, so in order to resolve the current situation more quickly, he simply focused on his interface. Squinting and leaning forward, as he discovered, was not particularly helpful when trying to see something that was in his own head. Focusing, he realized, might be similarly ineffective.

In this, he was also wrong. His interface did actually use his focusing efforts to adjust both itself and Omar in subtle ways. Despite it being apparently ineffective, there was a growing sense of recognition that encouraged Omar to continue. From his perspective, it was an odd situation. The flickering image did not change; it remained much too faint to make out any details. While he continued attempting to examine the unexaminable, all he could really do was make some wild guesses with half-formed thoughts. A line here or there was an edge, and there was something different between the blue and black parts that made up for the lack of sufficient contrast.

Mumbling to himself, he said, “Hold on, a minute. Is it trying to load or display another window in my HUD? Maybe focusing on it Is actually helping,” and then continued to do as such. Even for Omar, that wasn't a particularly brilliant observation, but by his standards it was nonetheless unusual. Additionally, due to the intensity of his concentration, Omar was unaware that he also continued squinting and leaning forward. Not only was this definitely useless, it was also an odd waste of effort for the proudly underachieving, lazy man.

“I see lots of them,” he thought, tentatively to himself. His interface had begun to make visual adjustments again, but even then, the flickering image remained terribly distorted. “They're like strings of icons or glyphs—,” he began, but then in sudden realization he said, “No!” out loud. “They're letters and words! Then that means it's just another message, right? But, if it's having so much troub—Ahh-l!” he exclaimed loudly and in surprise as if he'd been attacked.

In the middle of Omar's ruminations, the simple and unobtrusive glitch abruptly became intolerable when both his vision and hearing were simultaneously assaulted.

The disquieting silence that had made his soft mumbling seem so loud, was gone. In it's place, his hearing was blasted by the scratchy crackling pops of a voice distorted by white noise. Covering his ears had absolutely no effect, and yet, oddly enough, his own cries and complaints were loud and easily heard over the horrible noise. Still, Something was being said through the awful static, but Omar could only hear the word, “chronopause,” being repeated several times at irregular intervals. “I'll blame Suman for that later,” he thought righteously, but failed to draw any strength from it.

Meanwhile, the originally too-faint-to-see flickering image had become completely opaque. It flashed as a mess of blue and black that spanned his entire field of vision, flickering several times a second against the normal view of his living room.

Through the disorientation, Omar could see words again, more easily this time, except that each was made from a garbled mix of fuzzy and warped letters that were difficult to read. He could make out the first line that read, “Welcome to the chronopause!” but beneath that, he could only partially decipher the phrase, “Introduction to.”

“Introduction to what,” he asked, but there was no response. Like that, things remained, and there wasn't much that he could do but wait it out. Minutes or hours could have passed, and Omar would have been none the wiser.

Then, soon after he began to grow accustomed to the visual and auditory assault, both abruptly ended. The normal view of his living room returned, along with its recently acquired unnatural silence. However, at this point, both mattered little to Omar who was already lost in his thoughts.

“I guess the interface is still trying to put itself together,” he thought, much too casually, and without his usual characteristic irritation. “It was dumb to think that this thing could actually ‘reconfigure my nervous system’ so quickly. Back when I got that first text message, it had only been a few seconds since I touched the ticket. That probably wasn't even the actual interface. They could've just painted those words on my cornea, which is probably easier than integrating with my nervous system.”

It was an interesting thought because Omar had been out of his mind back before he lost consciousness, and now he was out of his mind again, but in several different ways. Needless to say, he was completely and entirely wrong.

“Kshh you hear … is?” his interface said in the same staticky voice as before. Mercifully it was now almost too quiet to hear.

“What? Was that a question?” he asked, sounding somewhat grateful that the sensory assault was finally over.

Omar's interface immediately responded with, “I'm sorry, I could not understand your response. Please try again,” by a voice that was now substantially clearer, but still sounded like it was came from far away. “How about now?” his interface asked in perfect clarity and at a normal volume. Now that he could hear it properly, Omar recognized it as the same voice he heard earlier; a generic, friendly, female telephone operator in his head.

“Oh, yes. I can hear that now,” he said, agreeably. Then, for its response, his interface gave him a clear but brief chime that sounded reassuring, rewarding, and slightly condescending. Oddly enough, Omar wasn't at all offended.

⁂

Omar remained on the couch, wondering how long he'd been sitting there like this. His apartment, which once felt like home, now felt like either he, or it, were eerily out of place. “Maybe I should get a clock in here,” he thought, quietly to himself. “It would have to be something durable, like made completely out of metal, so that it won't break so easily when I—” but then the telephone operator in his head spoke again, interrupting his thoughts. It asked, “Can you see the 3 blue shapes?”

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Omar laughed and said, “Hehe, what? Uhm, sorry, I don't see anything. But that's actually okay, I like it better this way.”

As if in response, numerous irregular splotches of blue and black appeared throughout Omar's field of vision, but with varying degrees of opacity. They came and went randomly, falling horizontally at him like splattering drops of blue and black rain. Every aspect of each irregular splotch varied from one to the other, and the only real common factor between them was their brief contribution to this latest round of visual assault. Pandemonium had all but replaced the originally uniform flickering.

Each drop or splotch lingered only briefly before disappearing completely, but even in that short span of time, some lingered noticeably longer than others. The effect left Omar with the impression that some of the splotchy drops of rain were as “thick” as sludge or as “thin” as water, while others still were wispy like cotton candy dissolving on a wet surface.

“Wow! My interface can mix things up too! Diversity!—Awesome! There's no way I'll get bored with this,” he said, trying to evoke the tone of a child in a 1990s commercial about microwavable burritos. Then for completeness, he added, “Yeah!” while pumping his fist once in a self-congratulatory gesture. Both Omar's interface and the universe-at-large, ignored his oddly specific sarcasm.

Gradually, the splotches began to condense into a bubbling puddle of blue and black that shrunk from the edge of his visual field to the center.

Had he any microwavable burritos, Omar was confident that he could make and eat lunch using only his peripheral vision. That was the extent of his idle thoughts as, after about a minute, only four large splotches remained in his vision. They each danced about like a ball of slime trying to make itself comfortable, before finally settling down. Three of them were blue and sat side-by-side in a row, while the fourth was black and sat above them.

“Can you see the 3 blue shapes?”

Before Omar could respond, the four splotchy shapes became transparent and then began flickering in sync with one another.

“I can see … something,” he said, uncertainly. “It's still too faint. I don't know what I am looking at, and it is all flickery again.”

The image changed again, and for a second, he did see three normal shapes very clearly. However, the fourth black shape was fuzzier and seemed to be something entirely different. Before he could decipher that fuzziness, the entire image became transparent and then subsequently disappeared again.

“Can you see the 3 blue shapes?”

“Right now? No. But I might've seen them before it all disappeared again. So, was it, uhm, a circle, a square, and a triangle under some sort of text box? I think it was a text box, but I couldn't quite make out the letters.”

When the image returned, it had darkened somewhat. The text box, however, darkened too much. It was an uneven black that had chaotic swirls in a variety of different shades of dark gray.

Gradually, while the entire flickering image began stabilizing, the shades of dark gray became more uniform, and random letters became distinct enough to see. The problem was that the black text box still remained, and some of the letters reverted back to earlier shades. It was only when the flickering finally ended that he could easily read the now normal black letters without the black text box.

However, after all of that, the result was rather anticlimactic. The revealed message was just the same question his interface had been asking him about the shapes.

As if it was responding to Omar's thoughts, his interface asked the question again. “Yes, I can see it clearly now,” he answered simply, as if someone was listening. He and his interface were alone in a “Moment” of the chronopause, separated from the AMIs and their support networks in Outworld.

The calibration program was essentially a simple automated script that monitored Omar's physiological state. It wasn't reading his mind or responding to his thoughts so much as it was responding to cues of cognitive activity that indicated certain conditions and actions like reading, recognition, or distress.

While chiming approvingly, once again, the question disappeared. The three shapes, however, remained visible in his heads-up display.

⁂

Without much delay, a new question appeared that he both saw and heard. “Click on the triangle,” it asked, and Omar did as he was told, like a normal person.

Next, he was asked to mentally drag the triangle onto the circle, and Omar was able to do so on his first attempt.

With those simple tasks complete, both the shapes and the remaining text disappeared, and then, as if to spice things up, his interface chimed twice.

⁂

Next, Omar's interface asked him to open his player status window, but just as with the prior tests, his interface was initially very glitchy. Sometimes it did not even recognize his request, while other times it grossly misinterpreted what he said. Omar opened all sorts of random windows that hinted at some sort of menu system that he couldn't yet reach by any other means. Still, it was sort of like taking a tour of the menu system, except that he had no idea where he was or how he even got there.

It was some mild comfort that the graphical design of the menu system was impressive, especially compared to what his interface had been showing him thus far. Unlike before, text boxes and windows had depth and appeared as though they floated in the air before him, rather than simply being plastered across his field of vision. The windows were “magically transparent,” not in the literal sense, but rather in that Omar could both easily see the window, and easily see through it as if it wasn't there. Generally, the menu system windows had a very modern sleek design with white letters on a soft blue background.

Even the error messages had a fancier graphical design, but their content, rather than being repetitive, was now exceedingly enigmatic.

“I'm sorry. That service is not available for psionic projections.”

“No, I said ‘Open Player Status.’ ”

The message, “Line 89,621,” came up on three separate occasions, with the exact same line number and absolutely nothing else.

Initially, Omar responded by saying, “What!? Seriously!? Shouldn't highly-advanced, sentient, alien supercomputers know how to comment their own programming code?” but by the third appearance of the same error, he could only sigh and try to enunciate his words more effectively. “Listen. … To. … Meee. ‘Open. … Player—’ ” he began to say, but his interface said, “I'm sorry. Internet access is not available within the chronopause,” before he could finish.

He tried all sorts of commands, synonyms, and different phrases, but sometimes his interface didn't even respond. “Basic stats. … Characteristic sheet. … Menu. … Absolutely any window at all. Hello?” With the eerie silence around him, it was like talking to the void.

At one point his interface said, “That function is disabled during the tutorial,” even though Omar himself hadn't said anything. Still, not once did he see anything resembling a player status window.

After a while, around the time Omar completely forgot about his lunch plans, his interface's mistakes and error messages became more consistent. Now, when he said something like, “Potato,” he'd get the message, “That feature has been deprecated,” every single time.

Eventually the main menu appeared, and there it was, “Player Status,” listed amongst six other apparent menu options. Omar leapt to his feet and quickly reached for the needed menu, but the window disappeared. When he sat back down, the main menu reappeared, and Omar said, “Of course!” and then experimented a little bit to confirm that the sitting requirement was real and that it wasn't going away.

“I just want to touch it,” he said pleadingly, and it was the most emotion he displayed since he unknowingly entered the chronopause. Unsurprisingly, the menu was too far away for him to reach while sitting down.

He started making rude gestures directed at the menu window, and to his amazement, his actions moved the window. When he was finally able to interact with the virtual window by touching it, he discovered that this too would be an ordeal.

All he had to do was touch the words, “Player Status,” and presumably he would finally reach his destination. However, it was only when he touched another menu option that he confirmed that his interface did indeed respond to touch commands. Even then it was sometimes overly sensitive, or more often, barely responsive, but rarely was it ever simply “responsive.” Getting his interface to respond when he touched the words, “Player Status,” seemed impossible, until it finally happened.

At last, after some considerable effort, his interface responded when he touched the magic words, and with that, Omar finally reached his player status window. However, as if to add insult to injury, the window was almost entirely bare of any useful information. Still, he saw some things that were familiar and others that were not.

Just as with a typical fantasy MMORPG, his player status window had “HP” and “MP,” even though both showed question marks. There was also “TEP,” which also showed question marks, and then a grayed out “QP” that showed “N/A.” Omar could reason that “HP” was his “health” or “hit points,” while his “MP” was a measure of how much mana or magic he had. He really hoped it meant one of those. As for “TEP” or “QP,” he had no idea what those meant.

After he closed the the useless window, his interface chimed twice.

When his interface spoke again, it asked for something unexpected. “Using a mental command, focus on any stat to call up more information.”

“Apparently, that useless window wasn't useless, after all,” he said flatly, and then sighed before attempting to ask, “Do I have to open the main menu and go through—” but stopped when the main menu flickered open and then immediately closed. “Did that just happen?” he asked flatly, but with a hint of uncomprehending disbelief. He said, “Main menu,” again, and remarkably, the main menu appeared. “Yeah, … so, … player status window?” he said, timidly, but this time it actually worked. “Oookay, then,” he said, almost sarcastically. It was all just too much for him to handle in his current state.

Focusing on the word, “TEP,” immediately made a small window appear. It read, “TEP: Time-Energy Points. This is a measure of the amount of stored time-energy that is available to you. See your time-energy profile for more information.”

“Wonderful,” he said, but in a manner that was very obviously sarcastic.

After that, Omar closed all the windows and wasn't even surprised at how easy it was.

Then, like a well-trained dog, he waited patiently for his interface to chime approvingly at him.

⁂

Omar barely survived the Outworld portion of the calibration process in part one of the tutorial, and yet, at this point he was only mildly irritated. Even then, this was only partly due to how amazingly functional and responsive his interface has been thus far in the chronopause. And it truly was amazing. Omar's interface has performed so well that it would make most players immensely jealous. However, if they'd been told that his interface was already performing this well at this early stage in the calibration process, they would hardly believe it.

By part four of the tutorial, Omar's interface will have become functional to a degree that will one day make it legendary.

Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, Omar's interface gave him an unprecedented triple chiming sound, and then said, “That concludes this round of calibration process. Would you like to begin your introduction to the chronopause?”

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