CHAPTER 6

“Ok ok ok, *now* we’re getting serious, boy!”

“Indeed. He seems to have settled in a bit more. Note the time, please?”

“Well, we’re just over three hours, but exactly what do I mark this under? There’s nothing listed for ‘First aha moment’.”

“It’s right there, ‘Situational Awareness/Acceptance Phase 1.’”

“Oh, I like that one. How did I miss that?”

“Because you’re not very smart?”

“I scored higher than you on the interview test.”

“On the *gaming* side, but fair enough. Point taken. ”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head.”

“I’m not sure it could find its way there on its own anyway.”

“What’s the norm for this? I heard #3 integrated on the first try, like, within the first 5 minutes.”

“Well, I’ve heard quite a few things about #3. Not sure how many of them I believe though.”

“I’m not sure how many of them I *want* to believe. As much of a narcissistic prick as this guy is, at least he’s not some homicidal maniac.”

“The day is young, my friend. The day is young.”

By the time I reach the stream, I have taken out three more rats. I am now the proud owner of four sets of rat teeth, three tails, and a sparkly kind of semi-precious stone I found on one of the corpses. No idea how he got that, but I’m not going to ask. At least it was auto-looted and I didn’t have to go...searching for it where he most likely had is “stashed”, I think to myself. None of the other beasties put up a better fight than the first one I stabbed, and I’ve upped my Sneak Attack skill and my Stealth skill by one each, and my Small Blades is well on it’s way to being level 3.

I can hear the water before I can see it. It’s the same happy, bubbly sound as before, not the deeper rush of the river. I half expect to see a forest rat waiting for me as I get to the edge of the banks, but alas, further revenge will have to wait for another day. Wherever it is I have emerged during this life, the stream is just as captivating and beautiful as it was the first time I saw it. The raging river was no less stunning, of course, but my mind was a bit preoccupied with being murdered by Winnie the Pooh’s drunk, ‘roided-up uncle. “And who’s fault is that?” I reprimand myself. I chuckle softly, both at my suicidal stat-boosting and the fact that I’m now talking out loud to myself. They must think I’ve cracked, I think.

If what they told me is true, at least what I paid attention to, I am under constant observation. My own private thoughts are just that: mine. However, anything I do, say, or experience will be recorded in some form or fashion. Privacy is a thing of the past, unless it stays between my ears. Even my vital signs, and everything that can be deduced from them given the circumstances, will be reviewable and documented. I seriously consider indulging in a little “fuck with the man” behavior, rocking back on my heels and letting loose with a cartoon villain “mwah-ha-ha”, but decide against it. If they *do* think I’ve cracked, they might just pull the plug if I give them cause.

And where would that leave me? I’m not too familiar with all the propaganda and literature they told me to read, but I am quite sure I remember them telling me this was a one-way ticket. I imagine it would be hard to pull all those electrodes out of my noggin without seriously lobotomizing my ass. And all the things that made me the “perfect candidate”, as they called me, would soon take on an entirely darker twist. “No family” would quickly become “no one to miss me,” just like “nothing tying me down” would quickly become “no loose ends to tie up.” So no, I will not be engaging in any more behavior that might make them question my stability. I can only imagine how easy it would be for them to ditch the evidence, so to speak.

I shake my head as the enormity of my situation looms in my mind once more. I’m here, I’m alone, and this is exactly what I signed on for. So quit bitching and get to playing, I admonish myself. This is every true gamer’s dream, to be set loose in a world of magic and monsters, to be able to be anyone you want, look like whatever you want, and do whatever you want.

I take a deep breath and recalibrate myself. Right now, I want to find the settlement, assess the situation, and figure out just what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I’m not sure where to go, which direction to choose, or what I’m going to do once I get there. I survey my surroundings, looking for a clue or something when a realization strikes me. Moron. I look at the compass on my map to find North, and step out of the tree line. Glancing that direction, I confirm my suspicions when I once again see the distant, misty twin mountain peaks jutting up from above the forest.

My eyes move down to the stream, and I see the flow of water headed south, away from the mountain. “Ok, so the source of the water is most likely there, which means if I follow this stream, I’ll find one of two things. A larger body of water, or people.” I think back to my previous near-encounter with the farmers, and I recall the river flowing over the land and under the bridge. Where there is water, there is life. That’s how my old world worked, and as the forest rat showed me, that’s how this world works, as well.

A sudden thought strikes me, one of the thousand or so since awakening in Pentamria, and I pull my leather gloves off and bend down to drink a handful of water. The cold, clean water passes my lips and I can actually feel it roll down my throat, just as I could in my old life. It's so cold I'm surprised there's not chunks of ice floating in it. Must be fed from those snowcapped twin peaks, I conclude. I close my eyes and let them roam around my screen interface, but I see no obvious changes. In many of the games I’ve played, mostly survival-type games, food and drink have their own status bar, letting you know when you need to fulfill those needs. Despite the obvious survival nature of this game, tied in with the role-playing aspects, there doesn’t seem to be one.

So there’s either no notification for thirst or hunger, or it’s simply reliant on my own body’s urges since I know when I’m hungry or thirsty, I conclude. I can see how there would be a need when playing a game with no sensory aspect, but seeing as I’m actually living this new existence, there isn’t.

Which poses yet another interesting question. Do I actually *need* to eat? Technically, the food isn’t nourishing anything, since this is all in my mind, and my physical needs are being taken care of intravenously back in the real world, so is this grumbling I feel in my stomach a game mechanic, or is there an actual danger if I don’t eat? Is it psycho-somatic, or is this yet another real danger for me?

My mind flashes back to the many interviews I had, the copious notes and books they gave me to read, still probably sitting on my coffee table in my abandoned apartment gathering dust. The irony of my youth rises up before me, mocking me with images of hungrily consuming the contents of dozens of game manuals. It seems when it’s not important in the grand scheme of things, nothing stopped me from reading every line, but I didn’t even crack the cover of those books when it could possibly save my life.

Save my life? I scoff. From what? I’m a fuggin’ immortal who only gets stronger when I die.

I sigh loudly as I kneel down to take another drink. I stand up, shaking the excess water from my hands before donning my gloves again, then get back on the move.

I consider getting back under the cover of the trees as I follow the stream, but the stream bank offers a much easier path to follow than ducking and dodging branches and undergrowth and, if I’m being quite honest with myself, I am truly enjoying this time out by the water. Between the sounds of the stream and the variety of non-threatening fauna I’m seeing, I feel a sense of relaxation I haven’t felt in years.

Who’d have thought a chunky city boy would like life on the run from savage animals, hiking down a stream where I was just brutally murdered by a giant prehistoric bear?

Once again my ears pick up the sound before my eyes clue me in to danger. This time, however, it’s something even more frightening than any of the creatures I’ve faced so far. My heart clenches, and I freeze in place as the sound reverberates within the wall of trees surrounding me. The forest creates odd acoustics, and have no idea where the sound is coming from.

Thankfully I have time to conceal myself behind the trunk of a large, gnarled willow hanging over the stream. The air, dense with the scent of nature and soil and other...foresty-type things, seems to close in around me as the sound gets closer. It’s quiet at first, but steadily gets louder as it approaches, crashing through the underbrush without concern for stealth. My fingers reach up and I find slight purchase on a massive branch overhead. I lift my feet up off the ground with a muffled grunt, locking my legs and quietly shimmying my way farther up into the boughs of the tree. The green light filtering down through the thousands of branches has a deceptive, peaceful quality belied by the approaching terror below. I freeze, unable to get myself on top of the limb, and hope that my new body can hold on long enough for the danger to pass. My stealth eyecon activates, and my stamina begins to drop.

The figure finally comes into view, and my worst fears are confirmed.

It’s a little girl.

She’s completely unaware of my presence as she walks directly underneath me picking flowers. Her plain dress...gown...whatever is dirty around the bottom, and not much cleaner across the top, and her messy yellow hair sticks out at all angles. I’ve never been good at guessing ages of kids, because I don’t like them, but she could be anywhere from 3 to 7. Or 8. She’s not wearing any shoes, but she doesn’t seem to mind as she walks across the forest floor.

The sound I heard earlier wasn’t her smashing through the woods, hell she probably doesn’t weigh more than 30 pounds. It was her singing. Her little high-pitched voice rambles on about some nonsensical thing or another, sometimes mumbled under her breath, like she forgot the words, other times loud and obnoxious. She bends down to pick another flower and loses her balance, falling the short distance down to her butt and I brace myself for the little monster to start crying, but instead she starts laughing. She stands back up and disappears from my view for a second as she passes directly beneath me. She’s gone for a few seconds, then she comes back out on the other side, walking towards the water.

With the mindless idiocy of what I’ve come to expect from a child, she underhand-tosses the entire mangled bouquet of daisies and other wildflowers right out into the stream and claps as the light current carries them downstream.

Stupid little kid, I think to myself. Spent all that time picking flowers just to throw them in the water. And for what? Just to watch them go down stream? I shake my head and try to tighten my grip as I feel myself slipping a bit. I’ve been hanging from this precarious perch now for almost a full minute, and I can see my stamina bar starting to reach a danger zone. I close my eyes and try to shift a bit to get a better grasp. And that's when I realize my eyecon is a brilliant shade of red.

“Do you like climbing trees, too?”

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I freeze.

“Hey, treeman, whatcha doin’?”

A bead of sweat drips down my forehead as I panic, trying to figure out what to do. “I...uh, I’m up here trying to pick fruit from this tree.”

“You’re not very smart, are you?”

My head snaps around as I try to make eye contact with the little punk. “Wha-aaaagh!” The bead of sweat that was rolling down my forehead finds its way into my right eye, and I involuntarily flich at the pain. Which, of course, causes my already tenuous grip on the rough bark to slip, which, of course, causes my body to fall from the tree, which, of course, causes all the air to be blasted from my lungs as I hit the forest floor from fifteen feet.

As I lay there, no doubt resembling a fish gaping for air, I can hear small footsteps approaching. I have developed a bad habit of getting the air knocked out of me.

I roll over and look up into the blue eyes of my tormentor, and she asks, “Are you ok?”

My head nods involuntarily as I continue to writhe around helplessly, not entirely sure if I am or not.

She continues, “I said, ‘You’re not very smart, are you?’ Don’t you know willow trees don’t have fruit? Well, not fruit you can eat.” With this, she holds out a small, chubby hand, offering to help me up. “It’s ok to say you like climbing trees. I like to, but I usually have to get a boost up to the first few branches ‘cause I’m tiny.”

When I don’t accept her hand, either because I still can’t breathe or because I hate her, she shrugs and plops down on the ground next to me. “Anyways, whatcha doing out here I like to come pick flowers and watch the water carry them into town I like to think that someone finds them while they are getting a drink or filling a bucket and it makes them feel good who are you?”

This entire rambling vocal diarrhea is said in one breath with no emphasis on any particular word, phrase or sentence. I have to blink a few times, now that I’ve gotten my breath back, as I try to decipher what she said. “I’m...my name is Pa...Puh...Paul.”

“Papa-Paul? That's a funny name are you a daddy where’s your kid?”

I sit up, frustration bubbling up and I raise my voice, “No...no! Paul, my name is Paul, I’m not a “daddy” and I don’t have any kids, ok?”

My panic has risen to a thumping sound in my ears now, and I scramble to my feet. I stand up over the girl, glowering down at her. She stares up at me with what I can only assume is a complete lack of fear, so I lean down close to her.

As I get close, the closest I’ve been to a person in this new world, I’m once again struck by the complete and utter flawlessness in the graphics. In fact, it’s really starting to mess with my mind. Am I really floating in a vat of goo with a couple dozen electrodes in my brain, or am I kneeling down in front of a child in the middle of a forest, next to a small stream? She’s so tiny, almost like a toy. Her cornflower blue eyes (of course they’re blue) stare up at me. Not expectantly like she’s wanting something from me, more like she’s just curious as to who I am. Everything about her is perfectly normal, from the slight dance of freckles across her little round nose to the way the dappling of sunlight catches the flyaway blonde strands of hair. There’s even a scar across one of her little shoulders, evidence of a run-in with...something.

I reach out with one finger and very gently poke her in the middle of her forehead, pushing her head back just enough for it to rock forward when I release pressure. In that brief contact, her head felt warm and slightly sweaty, like...well, like she had been wandering through the forest, picking flowers and throwing them into a stream.

Without missing a beat, she raises her grubby little hand and very gently pokes a finger directly into the center of my forehead.

“Is that how you say hello where you’re from?”

The spell is broken and I sigh heavily. I stand up and turn away from her. “No, I just don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“Well, I’m real, and you’re real, so…” Her little voice trails off into nothing, and I turn back to look at her, and she’s shrugging as if to say, “What else matters?”

“But how do you know I’m real? How do you know you’re real? How do we know that any of this is real?” My voice is damn near a shout by the end of my rant.

She stands up, brushing a few leaves and dirt off her palms and swatting her backside a bit to clean her already dirty dress. “Well, we did just poke each other in the forehead.”

A sharp bark of laughter pops from my throat and I look down, shaking my head. I put both hands on my hips and say, “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose we did.” She's a program, she's just a program, she's nothing but a program...

“Ok, I’m gonna go into town and see if anyone found my flowers.” She smiles again before adding, “Be careful climbing trees, Paul.” She turns around and literally skips into the trees, headed in the same direction as the flow of water. I hear her voice float back to me, “You’re not very good at it!”

Any good-natured feelings I might have to the little punk vanish in an instant, and I flip off the general direction in which she disappeared. If she sees it doesn’t really matter to me for several reasons, chief among them is that she is nothing more than data that won’t even understand the gesture to begin with. I wait a moment to let her get a head start on me. The last thing I want is to go traipsing through the forest with an annoying little chatterbox at my side, asking questions I have neither the desire nor ability to answer.

I turn back to the stream, eyes taking in the water running across smooth, fist-sized stones, the ever-present chitter-chatter of insects and birds. Again I’m struck by the calm feeling I have standing by this little river. If I had known what this was like, I would have moved to Colorado or something, I think to myself. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, reveling in the clear air. No allergies, no sniffles, nobody picking on me. I almost go back on my decision to go into town, to just stay out here and live.

And it’s then when I feel the eyes on me. Call it intuition, call it instinct, hell call it 13 points in Perception, but I feel someone or something watching me. I open my eyes and automatically draw my dagger, dropping into a semblance of a fighting stance. I know a little bit about dagger usage thanks to my new rogue skills, but that doesn’t mean I really know how to fight. Stick ‘em with the pointy end, I think to myself, that’s about all I know.

There’s a strange scent on the breeze, one that I don’t recognize, and one that I definitely don’t want to smell again. It burns my nose and makes my eyes sting a bit. It kinda smells like my piss after a helping of asparagas, I realize with more than a bit of disgust. My eyes move around the surroundings, body frozen. I know I’m not hidden by any means, but I figure if I don’t move, it’ll be less threatening to whatever is hiding just out of sight. Not even my minimap is showing an icon, which means that, friend or foe, this entity is stealthed. I wonder how they’re able to stay hidden from me. Are they that good at hiding, or are they using their own Stealth skill?

An idea comes to me, and I slowly back away behind the tree I used to avoid the little girl. I crouch down into the shadows, and just as I hoped, the stealth “eye-con” pops up. Sure enough, it’s open and red. After a minute or so of silence, the eye begins to close ever so slowly. The red aura around it shifts to orange, and then slowly to yellow. Finally, it shifts to green and closes. Once closed, the color around it vanishes completely, leaving the outline of a closed white eye.

Slowly, I snake my head around the side of the trunk, and within a second, the green-to-yellow aura appears again, and the eye begins to open, so I slip back into hiding.

So, I conclude, whatever is watching me is on the other side of the stream. I don’t know if it’s hostile or not, but whatever it is smells bad and isn’t coming out to say “hey!”. All those things add up to something I don’t really want to fuck with right now, so as slowly as possible, keeping the massive trunk between me and whatever is watching me, I focus on stealthy movement and slip off into the shadows of the forest. The indicator shifts to yellow, then to orange again, but the eye never opens the entire way, nor does it go red. Hopefully that indicates that whoever it is that’s watching me knows that I’m on the move, but can’t directly see me. Eventually the orange fades to yellow again, then green, and then stays closed for good.

As I slip in and out of the shadows of the forest, I see a flashing notification in the lower right corner of my field of view. I focus on it for a second and am rewarded with a notification.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have improved your STEALTH skill to Level 3! By evading the notice of potential threats, you have learned the value of staying unseen! Stay quiet, stay hidden, stay safe!

+1 to all STEALTH rolls

(+3 total)

CONFIRM

Ok, so there *was* someone watching me, I think to myself. At least I’m not going crazy.

My hand pauses as I reach up to dismiss the window, thinking back to both this one and the Unarmed Combat window that killed me previously, and I wonder what the significance is of the “+1” and “+2” to the rolls. Is this game based on the D20 system, a rather popular system that many of the most famous pen and paper games are based off, or is it a percentage? For that matter, are these rolls against a standard number or against a defender’s roll? For example, when I try to sneak past a guard, am I sneaking past a set number (say, 10 for a vigilant guard), or am I sneaking past a skill or ability of the guard, (say, a roll against his perception, and the higher roll, modified by skills and abilities, wins).

I suppose in the end it doesn’t really matter, because I either do it or I don’t, but what kind of bonus does the “+” provide, and is it worth it to continue to focus on leveling the skill? “Hell,” I shout to the skies, “how do I even gain levels in this game?”

I growl and vigorously shake my head in frustration. For the hundredth time it seems, I curse myself for not paying closer attention to the literature they gave me.

As I consider that statement, my frustration and self-pity is quickly replaced with another emotion.

Anger.

This isn’t even my fault, I think to myself. Why didn’t they test me over this? Why didn’t they check to see if I knew what was going on before they plugged me in? What kind of people just jam electrodes into some schmuck’s brain and turn him into a meatbag CPU for a damn video game?

I backhand the screen from my vision in frustration, and I resume my march towards town. The air begins to take on a new feel, and my footsteps gain speed as I abandon my attempts at stealth.

A break in the trees causes my eyes to flick up to my map as I roll along, and I’m relieved to see the edge of the forest just a few dozen yards ahead. The stream drops hard off to my left as I head slightly southeast, and when I emerge from the trees, I see a familiar sight. Glancing at my map again, I see I’ve emerged from the forest at a different point, but the terrain is still recognizable.

I’m looking down from a slight rise in the land into a beautiful valley. From where I stand, the land to my right slopes down steadily to an idyllic lake snuggled in between the mountains. The sun is past midday behind me, and with the mountains blocking out half the sky, nightfall is already sneaking up. The forest spans behind me to the west, while the mountains ahead of me, shrouded in the mists of the forest, continue to the southeast for many miles. A frothing, pounding waterfall flows down a ways north of the village, calming to a river creating a natural break in the valley. The water follows a slight bend in the mountains here, and across the crook of that bend is the village, nestled in the side of the mountain on the far side.

The village is set up on the slope of the mountain in three terraces. The last light of day is slowly retreating up the hillside one terrace at a time, as if hiding from the rising tide of darkness, and the mountains loom over the village from behind, rocky and craggy in the dying light.

The farms, as well as the farmers working the fields, occupy the bottom tier, a flattened area between the mountain and the lake, while the top tier, the smallest of the three, is mostly shrouded in trees. Several buildings can be seen through the canopies, including one large stone structure that resembles a church.

If I want to get to the second tier, what appears to be the main entrance to town, there is a little stone bridge spanning the large flow of water coming down the valley from the twin peaks to the north. It rolls smoothly down near the edge of the village before flowing underneath the bridge’s three arches in a torrent of crashing foam and mist, a triple-forked, forty foot drop to yet another flow leading to the lake beyond. Man, they really like waterfalls in this game, don't they?

By the time it settles down and continues its path around the farms, it joins the lake with little pomp or circumstance. Several boats dot the lake’s surface, riding the mountain breezes or just floating along. The stream by which I stand, barely half a dozen yards across at this point, flows down a pebble-strewn path to join up with the larger flow before the bridge, along with what looks like several other smaller outlets from various parts of the forest.

I steel myself for what I’m about to do, and begin walking down the grassy slope towards the road to the bridge. The long reeds of the forest’s edge gives way to shorter grass, which in turn gives way to a rutted, hard-packed road barely 20 yards below where I exited the treeline.

I stop at the edge of the ruts, unsure of why. I look back to the southwest, where the road traces along the edge of the forest behind me. There is an illogical, babbling voice screaming in my mind, telling me to run down that road, to put as much distance between me and the denizens of that civilization as possible. I turn farther back to the west, looking at the forest scrawling up the side of the mountains looming behind me, and I feel the allure of nature calling me. My fears, 35 years in the making, begin to strangle me once more. Even a child was enough to send me scrambling up a tree for God’s sake, what happens when I face a real problem?

I look down at my hands, unsure of what to do. When I do, I see the hands of a man, not a weakling. I see the arms of a champion, not a wimp. My fists curl in their leather gloves, creaking with the potential of power and strength. I’m better than they are. I’m the hero in this story. I’m a man, they are nothing but zeros and ones.

My eyes go cold and hard, and I take my first steps towards civilization. Time to figure out what the hell these people are doing in my head.