"Wait what?" Al said into the void.
His eyes were shocked back into a familiar darkness. It somehow felt worse than when the stark white of the text box had nearly blinded him before.
He had a sensation like waking up from a nap. Stillness gripped him as he realized he once again couldn't move. Though his body felt rigid his momentum allowed him to sway in the dark, like a bizarre metronome tick-tocking away. His arms and legs felt numb. No, they were more than numb. They were neither responsive nor tangible.
As he swayed and blinked, unable to tell if his eyes were open or closed, steadily the darkness softened around him. Shifting to a hazy gray filled with fuzzy blobs, before finally sharpening into a well lit night sky and shrubbery.
Lots of shrubbery come to think of it. As he rolled and turned, the rustling of leaves and twigs serenaded him. He was no longer floating in a void. He was now hanging from something. But how was he hanging? He didn’t feel anything wrapped around him like a harness.
With his eyes adjusted to his arboreal confines he began to do the only thing he could do. He rolled and swung back and forth. Momentum begot revelation, and with each oscillation, his field of view unveiled more of the verdant corridor.
“I’m stuck in a bush?” Al's thoughts ricocheted like a rubber ball. He continued to rock. He felt like screaming but he couldn’t. It was like being stuck in a nightmare, trying to shout but you can’t until you wake up yelling. His mouth felt glued shut. But he kept trying.
With much more effort than should have been required, he noticed his mouth begin to open. Only one side at first, and then it continued to slide open like someone was unsealing a zip-lock bag. He pushed himself to make words and got out a respectable, “Muuhhhaaaaaahhhh!!!”
The first few attempts barely lifted above a whisper, but persistence amplified his voice until it resounded with some semblance of normalcy. Amid his ever growing voice, a fraying knot sounded, and just as suddenly, Al's grip on the foliage faltered, propelling him into a tumble.
His body instinctively moved to cushion his fall, willing absent limbs to brace his body against the ground. But the sensation of impact was absent. Landing face-first in the dirt, he experienced no pain, as if he'd collided with a cloud.
Rolling onto his back, he mustered the will to sit up—though the motion felt more like an interpretive dance than a conscious effort. He felt an odd sense that he was sitting and standing simultaneously. Upright, or something close to it, he glanced around, greeted by a hedge-walled passage stretching in both directions.
The sky, a limitless canvas punctuated with stars, lay bare above him. The moon hung like a nearby lantern, its size and proximity lending an uncanny intimacy to the celestial display. It was far too big, or possibly too close? He wasn’t sure which was right.
"Could this be a dream?" Al pondered aloud, a query to the cosmos itself. "This can’t be a joke. I must be dreaming. Did I fall asleep at the golf course? Did I even go to the golf course?
At that moment, a familiar white text box wove itself into his view, the words transparent enough not to obscure the stars. It was like trying to read a menu through a rain-soaked window. Though he noticed if he focused on it, it became clearer.
No matter where he looked, the text box followed though it remained empty. There was a small blinking cursor in the middle of the screen. A simple white line flashing off and on, taunting him.
“Hello?” He asked again. But the box didn’t change.
He shook his head back and forth to try and clear the box. As he shook he noticed his whole body moved. He didn’t feel the ground underneath him still and as he tried to look down to examine himself he toppled over face first.
He screamed for the very short journey from standing to lying on the ground. Rolling to face the sky again, the empty text box floated in his vision. “What do you want from me!? Where are my arms and legs!? Why am I so small!? How do you expect me to DO anything?”
TUTORIAL ACTIVATED
"Ah, a tutorial," Al said with a skeptical grin, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he continued to navigate this interactive hodgepodge. "So, I've stumbled into a game? That or I’m in a coma.”
With a little less effort than before he forced himself up. “Okay text box. Let’s start with the obvious of where I am and what happened to me? And why don’t I have any arms or legs? And why am I coming to terms with that idea so fast!? And…and…” He paused for a moment. It felt like he had a hundred more questions and yet only one formed as he tried to look down again without falling. “What am I?”
The cursor in his vision tried to answer each question as he asked it. Erasing and rewriting a few times as he added more questions. After his last inquiry the cursor spat out quickly more information than could fit on the screen.
What was left floating on the screen was:
Hit Points (HP): 20
Magic Points: 0
Strength: 2, Style: 2, Dexterity: 2, Constitution: 10, Luck: 4
“Wait wait!” Al shouted. “What about that other stuff that went by before that? How do I go back or make this text box bigger?”
The box replied for the first time with a question. WHICH OPTION DO YOU WISH TO USE?
Al was taken back a bit at that. “Ummm both? How do I make the screen bigger and then how do I go back to that other information?”
THINK ABOUT IT. The text box replied.
“Is that some kind of joke?” Al scoffed. “Can you please talk to me like a normal person?”
YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
“Oh.” Al focused on the box and thought about making it bigger. And then it was bigger. It took up about half of his field of view now and he’d also somehow moved it to the center of his vision instead of being off to one side. Then he willed the text to scroll backwards like a computer monitor until he saw his name.
[[NAME: ALFREDON a.k.a. AL]]
BOY
SPAGHETTI SQUASH LESHY
PASSIVE: “HOLLOWED BE THY NAME”
You have been blessed with life by the goddess Gourdianna Greenleaf. As such you don’t need any of those pesky vital organs like other folks. Congratulations, you’re hollow inside! And not just in that emo depressed kind of way that makes you want to listen to songs from when you were in high school. You are literally hollowed out. You are basically a walking squash pocket. Items stored within you cannot be pickpocketed nor teleported out of you via magic.
STATISTICS:
Hit Points (HP): 20
Magic Points: 0
Strength: 2, Style: 2, Dexterity: 2, Constitution: 10, Luck: 4
He tried to look down at his lower body again, being careful not to fall over. He found that he was able to bend a little bit though not much. Then the shouting started again.
"I'm a what!?" Al's exasperation burst forth in vocal fireworks. "Why am I suddenly a walking gourd? And why does my existence sound like the setup to a bizarre punchline?" His urge to flail and stomp morphed into a silent tantrum of immobility.
Dreadful clarity overcame him, sinking its tendrils into his consciousness. It wasn't just his legs that had vanished; his stomach, his limbs—heck, his whole self—had been spirited away. He wanted to clutch his non-existent chest and scream, but his form denied him the satisfaction.
A shadow caught his attention in the periphery of his vision. He remembered the shadow responsible for sending him here. He thought about the text box disappearing and it left his vision clear.
The shadow moved unnaturally, though considering he was a squash he wasn't sure what qualified for natural anymore. It didn't walk like a person. Instead it scuttled like a crab. As it approached, the bright moonlight revealed that it was indeed a crab…sort of.
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What approached him was an amalgamation of part crab, part pistol shrimp, and part pie.
It scuttled up to Al, stuck out its tiny right crab arm and said, "Hello there friend."
His body resembled a triangular slice of pie, the larger, crusted side forming his head and narrowing gradually toward his bottom. Perched atop his pie-like head were two eyes on stalks, each one swiveling independently.
The crab's voice was surprisingly clear considering it had a small mouth and from what Al could tell, no teeth. He looked at the crab's outstretched arm. "Uhhhh. I'm a bit short on arms right now." Said Al.
The crab's eye stalks examined Al. "Right. That is an odd choice you've made there. But I suppose that's kinda expected here." He lowered his right hand and rested his body up onto his large left claw which was about a third of his full body's size. It had a large circular shield attached to it with a rope.
"Name's Eric, friend. Welcome to the Maze." His eye stalks never sat still for long. He alternated turning one and then the other to look past Al, down the hallway or looking back the way he had come from. "When'd you spawn?"
"Sorry, what? Spawn? Like a video game?" Al couldn't stop watching Eric's eyes. It made him nervous. "Like, literally five minutes ago give or take. I fell out of that hedge. Did you say maze?”
Eric stared at him with one eye while the other glanced at several spots on the hedge walls before giving up trying to locate where Al had fallen from. “So you are brand new. That’s exciting. I remember when I got here. It was only a few weeks ago, though it feels longer. So much happens here. Plus it’s always night and that kind of messes with your sense of time.”
Eric held his smaller right arm out for a moment and opened his four fingered hand. As he did this both of his eyes focused on the same location and then a moment later he was holding a glass of water. It looked murky and he watched Eric toss it back like a shot. Almost immediately the crab’s claw arm looked a little sturdier and his eye stalks seemed to straighten and glow green for a moment before returning to normal.
“Salt water.” He said, noticing Al watching him. “It’s a small health restoration drink for players who are part ocean dweller.” He opened his hand again and the now empty glass disappeared. “Still didn’t catch your name, friend.”
“I’m Alfredon, but you can call me Al. Everyone does.” He was still looking at the space where the cup had appeared and disappeared. “How did you do that just now? With the cup.”
“It’s just inventory management. Like in a video game, you can just hold stuff in a space. And then whenever you need it you can bring it back into existence again by accessing your inventory.”
Al watched Eric perform the act as he explained it. He held his right hand and opened it. As he did, his small sword disappeared with a shimmer. He paused for a moment looking at Al, then used the same motion and called the sword back to his hand.
“Ehhh, I’m not sure how you’re going to do it though if you don’t have any arms.”
“Well how did you figure it out?” Al asked eagerly.
“I don’t know. I just knew instinctively that this was the way that I wanted to do it, and then the system just made it work I guess.”
Al thought for a moment. He didn’t like what felt instinctive to him right now. But he was going to do it anyway. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue.
Eric jumped back. “Woah man. Give a little warning first. You are uhh, kinda scary when you open your mouth up that wide. Why are there so many little vines all worming around in there?”
This last statement was more of a whisper to himself and Al didn’t hear him over his loud, mouth breathing. He stuck his tongue out. It was a large tongue made of the same material as the rest of him, though it was coated in strings of squash flesh and seeds.
He pressed his tongue into the air as though he was trying to lick something. As he did, his menu appeared in his vision again. He was able to navigate through several screens by flicking his tongue back and forth, like he was scrolling on a touch screen.
The multiple screens showed several pieces of information. First was his stats along with little boxes labeled for armor or clothes. It also had locations for handheld weapons but they were faded. The second screen contained a hundred slots. That seemed like a lot but Al had played games before and knew how fast inventory filled up. Several items were already taking up some of his inventory slots.
He saw the clothes that he’d been wearing when he fell down the drain, the solar light he had been tossing around, and the key to his apartment. He could access the clothes and the light but the key slot was faded out. When he used his mind to select the scarf it glowed. He wasn’t quite sure how he selected it, he just thought about wanting it. As he did the scarf appeared wrapped around him, though it fell messily at his base due to his shape.
Eric chuckled at this. “Nice scarf. Does it come in your size?”
Al looked at Eric, a bit peeved at first, but then he sighed and chuckled also. He thought about putting the scarf back and it disappeared in a shimmering light, reappearing in his inventory. He swiped in his menu to the right once more and saw an image of a table in the center of the screen. There was another icon on the right which he could select with his mind that looked like a table. When he thought about it, the table moved to the middle and the cauldron moved to the side.
“Hey what’s the screen with the table and cauldron for?” He asked Eric. “There’s nothing else here and they don’t do anything when I select them.”
Eric’s eye stalks shifted and Al was certain it was the equivalent of raising an eyebrow. “I don’t know that one. Must have something to do with your build. Not everyone has the same menu. But we can head into town and ask around.”
“Riiiight. So about traveling to town.” Al looked down at his lack of legs. “The idea of rolling everywhere I go is not appealing. Especially if this maze is as I suspect, full of lots of twisting and turning. How far is town?”
As Eric opened his mouth to answer, a sudden rustling in the hedge maze walls caught their attention. Al felt a shiver of unease, while Eric's crusty exterior bristled. Al noted several crumbs fell from the crustacean’s back.
There was a ripple along the leaves of the wall, a peculiar creature emerged. It was a small pig-like figure constructed entirely from leaves and sticks, resembling a makeshift, living topiary. It ambled toward Eric, its twiggy hooves crunching softly on the ground, and it carried a small, rolled-up parchment in its mouth.
With a sense of purpose, the leafy pig approached Eric and gently offered the note, holding it out with its twig snout. It snorted as it stopped and a small spray of seeds and leaves flew out.
Eric crouched down, carefully took the note from the creature’s snout, and unfurled it. His eyes scanned the written message, and a concerned look washed over his face. He turned to Al and said, "It's from Morel, the mushroom quest-giver in town. He says there's trouble.” He sighed. “All the more reason to head back.”
Al, who was still trying to wrap his head around this fantastical world, felt a surge of unease. “What is that thing?” he said pointing to the delivery creature.
Eric looked at the animal and then back to Al. “It’s a hedge hog. They live in the walls of the maze. Well, at least in the areas closer to the center where the walls are all hedge. Players and NPCs can use them as messengers since they can easily pass through the maze. As you just saw.”
“Do you have anything that we can give him as a treat?” Eric asked. “It’s not necessary but it helps with your reputation score if you can get on their good side early on.”
“Beats me man. Does he want a scarf?” Al chuckled.
“Har Har. Let me see your inventory.”
“And how do I do that exactly?”
“Right. You kind of just think about showing it to me. It’s hard to explain the interface. When I think about it, I bring up my menu and then imagine pushing it like a blackboard so that it turns around. And it just becomes visible to whoever I want. Like this!”
As he said it he raised his hand once more. He opened it like before but this time he motioned as though he was spinning something around. And then there it was. An inventory screen similar to Al’s but in a different color and font. A hundred small boxes with items in a little under half of them.
Al tried not to read the items as it felt rude to pry, even if he was openly being shown them.
“Got it. I’ll give it a go.” He stuck his tongue out once more. The hedge hog turned to watch Al as his tongue swiped to the inventory screen and then he imagined the screen turning around to face Eric.
“Woof.” Said Eric. “Pretty bare bones, mate. No worries, we’ll work on it.” He stopped short. “Hey a light. The hedge hogs like light sources that aren’t moonlight. Take that solar torch out and see if it likes it.”
Al took the light out of his inventory. When he brought it forth his tongue was wrapped around it. Holding it like a prehensile tail. It didn’t emit light right away like they did in the real world. Al spotted a switch on the base of it.
“Eh-ick.” He said with some difficulty. “Air ith a slitsth on nuh ight.” He leaned the light in Eric’s direction to show him.
Luckily Eric spoke ‘squash-with-tongue-out’ and understood what to do. He reached out and flicked the switch.
As Al held it aloft, a warm, radiant light emanated from the device. It wasn't just any light; it was sunlight, and as it washed over him, Al felt invigorated.
A peculiar sensation surged through him. He could hear what sounded like rustling leaves and looked towards the area of the maze wall where the hedge hog had come from, expecting another message. As he looked he saw an intricate interconnected growth of vines protruding from his side.
“HOLY…” he dropped the light onto the ground as it continued to bathe the area in warm light. It was tinged yellow and Al saw the hedge hog walk towards it and sit down as if warming itself by a fire.
A moment later he noticed himself rising off the ground. Looking down he saw similar growths of vines sprouting from below him in two columns. He looked up at Eric and shouted, “I’ve got legs!”
“You’ve got legs!” Eric had said at the exact same time. “And arms!” Eric added. It looks like you just needed a little plant food.
Al instinctively flexed his new vines. He’d grown ‘fingers’ and a ‘thumb’ though they were all the same length. He didn’t have joints, which was a bit strange to get used to. His legs were thicker and stronger than his arms. They didn’t have joints either but did bend near the middle and bent more like the curve of a short bow than a knee.
His ‘feet’ if you could call them that, were really just a mass of smaller vines that provided support. It was like having shoes for feet. This would take more getting used to.
With his newfound vine limbs, Al looked to Eric. “Shall we head to town then?” He reached down and picked the solar torch off the ground with his new right hand. Then reached out and patted the hedge hog with his left hand. “You are the best hedge hog. Yes you are. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have gotten my new-”
[HE’S GOT LEGS! AND HE KNOWS HOW TO USE THEM!]
Congratulations! You’ve absorbed enough sunlight or imbibed enough fresh water to finally grow a pair…of legs!
[ARMED GOURD]
Congratulations! You’ve absorbed enough sunlight or imbibed enough fresh water to grow arms. Now you can live your dream of standing in front of a car dealership flailing wildly. Or just go pick up stuff I guess.
Al shook his head. “Does the system alway interrupt with notifications?”
Eric laughed. “Yeah. But you can silence that so they just show up as little alerts on your menu and you can check them later. Come on, I’ll show you on the way to town.”
Al, who had been interrupted mid pet of the hedge hog, let his hand fall to his side. The hedge hog seemed pleased and gave a snort before diving back into the wall it had come from and disappearing in another ripple of movement.
“Alright. Let’s go.”