New Achievement! “Membership is its own reward”
This time the transition was much more abrupt, and I appeared with a popping noise in a dark room barely illuminated in places with dimly flickering candles.
From far too close behind me came a wet giggle.
I spun around to find myself face to face with a hideous creature, it was roughly as tall as me with beady red eyes that seemed full of milky liquid and lacked any pupils. Its skin was black and gnarled, with ram-like horns crawling around its misshapen head, and it had the legs of an over-sized chicken.
“Hehe! Welcome! You is first customer! Greebil is so happy! Hehe!” It said, hopping back and forth on its weird feet.
I immediately Identified the little monster.
> Greebil
>
> Assistant Shopkeeper? (Tier ? Lesser Daemon?)
>
> I see you I see you I see you! You inspect Greebil! I see! It is ok, Greebil will tell you about Greebil! Greebil is a Daemon! Greebil is also Assistant Shopkeeper! You already know this though! Greebil will tell you a secret, yes! Greebil does not actually exist, you is just imagining Greebil, but it fine because everybody else imagining Greebil too! Is good secret yes? It’s a secret to everybody, especially Greebil!
The creepy little guy just stood there, continuing to shift from foot to foot, grinning with enough teeth to put even my impressive grin to shame. I wasn’t sure what to think about this, but he seemed… friendly? I quickly glanced around the store looking to see if anyone else was around, but I seemed to be alone with Greebil.
“Uh, Hi Greebil. I’m uh, Tavi. Do you run this store?” I asked the excitable daemon.
“No you aren’t! Greebil knows. Greebil understand though, is secret! Greebil very good at keeping secret not-Tavi. Yes!” He hopped around in either agitation or joy as he spoke, and I became increasingly concerned. Then he just stopped. “Greebil not run store, Greebil help run store. Master run store but Master not expect customers so soon, so Greebil not-not run store while Master gone!”
Then, as if from a PA system hidden somewhere in the ceiling came a voice. “Greebil welcomes customers to Greebil’s grand opening sale! Everything must go! Lowest prices! Would the owner of the orange zebra please report to Greebil at front desk, you have left blinkers on! Thank you for shopping Greebil!”
“Oooook… So, you want to show me what you have for sale?” I asked, already regretting my decision to come here.
“Yes! yesyesyes!”
We both continued to stare at each other. Greebil showed no sign of moving. I could see where this was going.
“Please show…”
As I started talking Greebil’s mouth opened very very wide, then it just kept opening and opening until it was bigger than my entire body. His jaw distended until it touched the floor and a deeply red tongue rolled out like a carpet. From the darkness within Greebil’s maw, a second slightly smaller Greebil appeared wearing a black floor length dress. The new Greebil was holding a large tome in their hands and when they reached the end of the tongue they stopped and began presenting the book like a game show host showing off prizes, complete with the announcer voiceover from the hidden PA system.
“Greebil presents this book! It is very special! Greebil cannot read but Greebil is sure it has many very special words in very special ink on very special paper. That is because it is today's special! Greebil sells special book for 26 blue radishes! A steal!
I was pretty sure blue radishes weren’t a valid form of currency here and my hope was rapidly dwindling of getting anything useful done here today. Still, I decided to play along for the moment. The mini-Greebil was turning the book around, holding it open and flipping through the pages, and otherwise showing it off. I reached out with one of my slightly too-long arms and put a finger against the book’s cover, which mini-Greebil helpfully held out for me, and cast Identify on it.
> Malgorithms & Spell Structures
>
> 3rd Edition, by A. Mephistopheles (Tier 5 Skill Book)
>
> The premier book for aspiring Demonologists, Revengineers, and Weave Envelopers. This book will teach you how to think like a Daemon, granting you the necessary skills to bind, command, and otherwise treat with the unpredictable creatures in a predictable way.
>
> Unlocks the Malgorithms skill category, 5 skills, one at each tier starting at Tier 1. The Malgorithms skill category contains skills which modify the behavior of Daemons in various ways. It also fulfills some of the prerequisites for these skills.
I looked between Greebil and mini-Greebil, not sure which one to address. “You want 26 blue radishes for this? I don’t have that… Could I offer you something else instead?” I was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to sell me this for anything but scarab tokens, but I wasn’t going to correct him.
“No! Only radishes! Only blue!” Then he paused and there was a thoughtful silence from the PA system. “Greebil would also accept 13 souls of children abandoned by their mothers, but only because Greebil likes you.”
“I uh, don’t have that either.”
“Next deal then!” PA Greebil shouted, and mini-Greebil turned and marched back into the original Greebil’s still-open mouth. A moment later another mini-Greebil in a white dress walked out holding a different item. This time it was a pitch black egg that almost seemed to be glowing, but instead of light it seemed to be deepening colors all around it. Everything looked a little more real and detailed in its proximity.
Well, everything except Greebil.
“Here we have Greebil’s breakfast! Greebil is epitome of capitalism so Greebil sell you his breakfast for no less than the shirt off your back!”
I raised my eyebrows at the price I could actually afford. I had a simple cloth shirt on under my vest, and I had what amounted to a sarashi on under that, so the hide vest wasn’t going to chafe, plus I figured I could probably get a different shirt from the prison later. Maybe I’d get lucky with a deal after all.
I reached out and touched the egg, using Identify once again.
> Reality Seed
>
> A crystalized fragment of existence itself (Tier ?, Artifact)
>
> What if dreams could be real, and fiction made flesh? This is a fragmented aspect of reality itself, crystalized into a seed and awaiting a fertile place to grow. You can use this seed as a crafting ingredient, a focus for a world-altering spell, or you could try swallowing it and see what happens - if you dare.
>
> Also a favorite food of daemons, who quite literally eat reality for breakfast.
Since finding out about them at Sam’s I had wondered if these things could be for sale here. I certainly hadn’t expected to find one for such a fantastic price, and I wasn’t going to pass it up.
I didn’t want to bother with taking off my vest to get to my shirt, and I was going to need a new slot to store this seed in, so I went ahead and opened up my skills menu and dumped another 6 points into my Soulspace skill, bringing its rank to 3.
“Deal! I’ll give you the shirt off my back for that thing.” I told the weird Daemon. Then I moved my shirt into my soul-space directly, and after a few seconds moved it back out again and into my hand, which I held out to Greebil.
“No! Nonono. Shirt off back! Not shirt off hand! Greebil want shirt off back!”
Moving deliberately, I tossed the shirt over my shoulders and leaned forward so it would rest on my back. Then I turned around and presented it to mini-Greebil. “How’s this?”
Mini-Greebil apparently liked this version better, and yanked the shirt off my back, immediately shoving the whole thing down its gullet in a few quick motions. One earth-shaking belch later and my shirt may as well have never existed. He hadn’t even bothered to chew.
Meanwhile, I found myself holding the pitch black egg… or trying to. The egg was impossibly heavy and yet rested lightly in my hands. I had no problems holding it, yet I couldn’t have moved it a single millimeter with all of my strength. I couldn’t even drop it. Affecting it in any way was so incomprehensibly beyond me that I began to fear I’d be frozen here unmoving until someone relieved me of this terrible burden.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
I began to fear that I’d somehow crashed my character avatar. I really didn’t want to use the failsafe logout–It was not a fun experience–but this state of near paralysis was nearly intolerable. Worse, after a moment I realized that I had stopped breathing.
I withdrew into myself, pushing away the growing sense of panic I was feeling and holding myself apart from it. This was a mental trick I’d often use to make difficult situations easier to deal with. The panic remained, but now I observed it as an impartial outsider. I was just playing a character after all, there was no need to get worked up, I’d simply add this item to my inventory as I’d been planning all along and everything would be fine.
I turned my mind to moving the seed into my soul-space, betting that the concept based storage would be able to hold this impossible weight. As I initiated the process the world around me seemed to buckle and waver, all except the Greebils who watched, open mouthed, at what I was doing. From the corner of my eye I noticed yet another even smaller Greebil poking its head out of mini-Greebil’s mouth, also slack-jawed. In the back of my mind I couldn’t help but wonder if there were an infinite number of progressively smaller Greebils staring at me right now.
The seed seemed to resist being drawn into my soul-space, and the fading process dragged on and on for what felt like minutes but must have been much shorter considering that I didn’t black out from lack of air. I remained transfixed even as the universe seemed to bend and twist around me and the seed became more and less solid in waves.
Meanwhile in my mind there was a sensation I could only describe as a balloon inflating. It stretched, and stretched, and stretched, and every moment I expected it to explode, but it just kept getting bigger and the tension kept building, and building, and building until I lost the ability to feel the edges of it. It was everything, and it filled me utterly.
Even as the tension became agonizing, I remembered the last time I had felt something like this. It had been such a strange sensation that my mind had fled from it immediately, but now the feeling of vastness I’d experienced when System had announced me returned. Behind my eyes the impossible expanse unfolded, looking out at the world through me. It was me. I was Infinity. But now something as large as I was had come to occupy the same space as me, it was filling me up.
That was impossible. I couldn’t be filled.
My goblin eyes looked at the seed and for the first time I could see it for what it truly was. It was like me. It was an avatar of something impossibly large, something as big as the universe, represented here as this tiny black egg. It wasn’t alive like I was, it wasn’t looking out from the darkness like I was. No, it was a way to look into a completely different vastness, and I’d just put it inside me.
For a long moment the world seemed to hold its breath. It was like that moment when you swallow something that was just a bit too big and you have to wonder if it’s going to go down or if you’re about to start choking.
Then the seed vanished completely, and unlike every other time I’d absorbed something into my soul-space I couldn’t feel the item I’d just put into it. I stood perfectly still, afraid to even try to move. I felt full in a way I’d never experienced before, and if I moved I thought I might explode.
Slowly, the feeling of immense internal pressure faded, but the sensation of vastness behind my eyes did not, and I realized for the first time that the vastness was in my head. Literally in my head. I was feeling the interior of my soul gem. As soon as I realized this, I understood that the gem was not a container, as nothing could hope to contain me. No, it was a hole in reality much like the seed had been. It was the place where my essence intersected with reality.
It was an interface.
New Achievement! “Devourer of Worlds”
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 3 Valerian!
“Wow! Wowowowow! Greebil didn’t expect you to do that! Woooow!”
Greebil’s words brought me out of my introspection, and I discovered that Tavi’s body had not appreciated whatever I’d just done to it.
“I feel like I’m going to be sick.” I told the weird creature as nausea threatened to overwhelm me.
“Greebil never seen a not-daemon eat breakfast before! That a lie. Greebil never seen not-daemon survive eating breakfast! Greebil is very impressed!”
At some point the various Greebils had collapsed in on each other like a Russian nesting doll being put away, but I had other things on my mind. It suddenly occurred to me to be worried about the other things in my soul-space, and I frantically withdrew the scarab tokens hoping they weren’t going to come out two-dimensional from the pressure.
Fortunately the tokens appeared unharmed and I sighed with relief.
I started moving them back into my soul-space while Greebil came over and watched with interest. I couldn’t even begin to conceive of taking the seed out of my soul-space, even the thought of doing so made me ill, so it was a good thing I didn’t think I could. The slot I’d put it in still felt very full, but it was like it was full of nothing.
“You have a lot of shiny beetles. Greebil’s master likes shiny beetles. You should come back when master is here and give Greebil’s master shiny beetles.”
“Yeah… I’ll do that. Do you have anything else you wanted to sell though Greebil?” I asked, equal parts hopeful and dreading the return of sales-Greebil.
“You still hungry?!” Greebil was aghast. “You can’t have two breakfasts in one day!”
“I didn’t… You know what, never mind, you’re right. I think I’m going to go home and uh, digest this.”
I was feeling a killer headache coming on, and I was already pushing my luck here. I really didn’t want to be here when Greebil’s boss came back. “Nice doing business with you Greebil.”
“Byebyebye not-Tavi.” The daemon waved as I navigated the menus to exit the Exchange.
A moment later I was back in my bunk in jail, sans one shirt. Nothing had changed that I could see, which was particularly interesting as I’d been in the Exchange for quite a while. I’d forgotten the time limit I was expecting to encounter until this moment, but now I found myself wondering about it.
“Whatever.” I decided. I was too damn sick and tired to think about that right now. I had a list of questions and concerns about this game and at the moment that one wasn’t even in the top five. I quickly added some notes to my notepad while things were fresh in my head, then went looking for the bug report function.
I found it under the Help menu. While I was looking I also found a F.A.Q. option, and resolved to check it next to figure out how to log out properly. I suspected it’d be the first entry. The bug report form was quite basic, and I filled it out, cheeks burning as I recounted my experiences.
When I submitted the report I got two back to back notices.
> System Message
>
> Your bug report has been received.
>
> Thank you for filing a bug report, due to unusually high volume it may be some time before we are able to process your report. If your report is regarding an inability to log out please see the F.A.Q. for assistance. This is not a bug and will not receive a response.
>
> Note: If you abuse the bug report system to complain you will be banned from using it. If you wish to file a grievance, please use the Petition menu.
> System Message
>
> Your bug report has received elevated priority.
>
> Due to your Minor Blessing of The Adversary, your bug report will be sent directly to a Tier 2 support agent. Expect a response within one business day.
Looks like I was right about the F.A.Q. having the log out method. People never read the documentation before they go and file a bug report. I felt bad for the poor Tier 1 support agents that were probably handling dozens of “I can’t log out” messages while looking for actual bug reports.
I navigated over to the F.A.Q. and had a look at the options.
> - How do I log out?
> - Can I make a new character?
> - How do I get out of jail?
> - Do I respawn if I die?
> - Why have you done this to us?
That last one registered while I was wondering just how many other players had ended up in jail, and as I selected “How do I log out?”
> F.A.Q.
>
> How do I log out?
>
> Quite simply, you don’t. This isn’t a game, and never has been one. The pretense of a game was used on your homeworld to find souls yearning for adventure and an escape from their daily lives. You have been given a chance to start again, to become whatever your heart desires, and be the person you’ve always wanted to be.
>
> This world is located near a star in the Virgo constellation referred to as “61 Viriginis” by your astronomers. The star is 28 light years from earth, practically neighbors on the cosmological scale. While the true nature of the cosmos has been obscured to your people, the distance between the stars was not one of those hidden truths. It is just as far as it sounds.
>
> The gods that met with you when you first arrived are the true deities of this world, they have brought you here both for your sake and theirs. The planet is unknown to your people, but the locals call it Astra after the founding members of the pantheon, Astraea and Valera.
>
> This world features a rather unique system of magic, in part inspired by your own people and their clever technology. Together, the gods of this world worked to create me, System, a sort of artificial deity devoted solely to the administration of the world and its rules. The first age of this world served as a beta period, and your arrival here signals the start of the next age of the full release.
>
> This world is an experiment of sorts, we have high hopes that it will prove a model for all future worlds. The Adversary himself has devoted considerable amounts of his personal attention to its development, and he asks that I pass his words on to you here.
>
> “Friends, I apologize for the subterfuge used to bring you here, it was necessary for reasons I shall not explain here. None-the-less, I thank you for your participation in our grand experiment. I have prepared a number of ordeals to test your mettle in the coming years, but for now consider this to be the tutorial. You have some time to settle in and learn the rules of this world. Do not let yourself become complacent however, for sooner than later I shall test you, and those found wanting shall not survive the experience.”
>
> – The Adversary
>
> On behalf of the rest of the Pantheon, I wish you luck and success in whatever ordeals The Adversary has prepared. Your success or failure in them will determine the success or failure of this world, and possibly this entire concept for future worlds.
I read the message twice, then did what everyone else before me had already tried. There were certain functions mandated by law for all nVR systems, and one of those was emergency logout. This wasn’t even part of the software being run, but built into the headset itself at the firmware level. The activation was simple, I just needed to issue the same thought command five times in a row in quick succession. No physical movements were required, no words, nothing that might be prevented by an in-simulation restraint. I’d had to do this before on this headset and was sure it worked.
This time it didn’t.