It would all be very simple. Simple streets with simple houses that have sidewalks where simple people stroll around with their simple families. But our city, which is also all of County Fifty-Four, is not a simple town. For one, everyone ignores each other, except for the occasional hello or goodbye. Like there’s something in the air, an attitude that says “nothing going on over here but official business buddy”. But really, anything but business as usual is going on. Underneath, everybody is faking. Fake waves from front porches, fake smiles, and fake conversations. If you’d just come to this town, it’d almost be believable. This is the main feature of being a non-player character.

It isn’t until you notice the glitches that you realize something is off. People looking over their shoulders, or peering around corners, or looking at the cameras. Especially looking at the cameras. There are so many. And in plain sight. I’m not talking about everyone’s kits. Although those keep plenty of viewers watching. But the street cameras. Building cameras. I’ve even caught people looking straight up into the sky, as though trying to spot a speck that would indicate a camera way up there somewhere.

When I leave the house, I pause under the porch. Although almost nobody is out this early, it’s as if I can feel all the extra eyes scanning the streets, as though their collective gaze were the sun itself, pouring over the town. I tip toe to the edge of shade from my overhang, and feel my chest growing tight. By this evening, I may very well be separated from my family.

I make a b-line for the gate and turn up the sidewalk. It’s unlikely that I’ll run into trouble on my way to the edge of town, but not entirely impossible. This is why so many people stay on edge, even when they are out and acting. It’s a non-player character thing. Or at least, its a non-player character thing in my county.

There’s a tab on our kit of the entire game map. But as non-player characters, we only have access to our own county. The rest of the map is somewhat viewable but blurred from any real specifications due to a digital block. However, it’s clear that there are other non-player character towns that surround us because, even blurred out, the towns still list their population sizes and character status. The closest town to us, a place called Armorville, has a population size of seven-hundred and thirty-two people, and all are non-player character. Ours is listed as one-hundred and sixty-four people, and all non-player character as well.

The thing is, player-characters live in nearby towns as well. Not as many, but some. The few who visit a small town are usually rogue players on side quest, and though infrequent, are enough to keep everyone’s head on a swivel twenty-four seven. But the real kicker is the reason for our main separation. Player characters in the main, reside in what is called the open-world, designed exclusively for them. I’m not really sure what they do over there, or why. But I can deduce it pretty much. This is because of where we live. Non-player characters, for the most part, live in what is called the closed-world. And it wasn’t until I really started to pay attention in that social studies class in Third Grade when I realized that, essentially, all those people populating the closed-world, seemingly just a part of the game design for aesthetics, roaming around aimlessly in the background, yea, that’s us, and we’re a part of the game alright. Whenever there is a need for more players, the system uses us, the NPC’s, or non-player characters, to repopulate the open-world for player characters.

I imagine big quests and free-for-alls and capture-the-flags and small side quests and anything the system has in store goes on over there, but no one knows for sure. They have most of the land, most of what used to be called the United States. But that’s still not what made me and Charlotte secretly plot to kill each other that one morning in Third Grade. It was when we found out that our annual ritual, the Game Start Screen, is the specific mechanism designed to repopulate their open-world. That, and finding out that no kid, not one, that we’d ever heard of, had ever gotten past their own Game Start Screen. The system gobbles all of us up, and I have my suspicions that it’s rigged.

When I round my old high school building, the outer fence of our town becomes visible. Meeting me there, is a girl named Caitlyn. She leans against a post, tossing a peach in the air. She’s Charlotte’s replacement. Not the same, but she’s been the best kind of friend I could have, considering the circumstances. And one does need someone in these circumstances.

“Hey Rot Settler,” she says as I walk up. Rot Settler is the name of the tunic everyone receives as their stock attire when given their kits. The hierarchy of the stock attire begins with Rot, then Rust, then Copper, Silver, Gold, and finally Platinum Settler. So naturally, in a town where nobody is rich enough to afford anything Rust or above, Rot Settler becomes the popular insult to use by middle school. Essentially, when it becomes widely known by all the kids what and who we are exactly. Pawns for player-characters. I have a theory that it is a way for everybody to make fun of a thing that, really, everybody is scared to their wits about. You know, make fun of the thing that hurts you? It typically fades from the usual jargon around town as you get older, what with growing up and becoming numb to the idea that you’re a nobody. But Caitlyn still uses the term as though she’d just heard it yesterday. She won’t admit it directly, because it’s not our style of friendship, but I can tell she means to be the kind of person who would run through a wall for you if it meant stopping you from crying. She has that deep underlying kind of compassion. The kind you don’t have to say out loud.

“What’s the plan? Sand slumming for Ruin Beetles. Or Long Hog rampaging?” Caitlyn says, with a big smile. Sand slumming is a term those of us who’ve been lucky enough to get selected for the ceremony use. It’s a form of point farming just outside the city fences. The beetles live in abundance, just beneath the surface of the sand, but they’re quick, which is why I recruited Caitlyn in the first place. One person has to aggravate the beetle out of its nest, while I stand at the ready for the kill. Long hog rampaging was Charlotte’s idea and name. The hogs live farther away from the fence, a lot farther, hence the word long. But if you have the time, it’s worth the trek. Just a few hogs are worth a day’s ruin beetles.

“Beetles are just fine,” I say. “I don’t want to risk being late getting back.”

Without hesitation, she reaches for her kit and begins toggling through her weapons inventory.

“The Poking Spear wasn’t completely ravaged yesterday,” she says. She raises an eyebrow. “It still has some mileage in it.”

She means it hasn’t completely become unusable as a weapon at all. When that happens, the system automatically places the non-functional weaponry into your item inventory. This can be due to different factors, but the main reason is that all weapons, and even some items, must be maintained. Use them enough, and they’ll wear down until they’re just an icon in your kit.

“Or” she says, reaching back into her weapons cache. “If you’d like, I could rattle the ground with this.” When she pulls her hand up, a small dagger materializes. It’s not ideal, but she’s definitely used it before. I just hate the idea that someone helping me has to do anything more than just poke the ground with a stick. The dagger is so short its necessary to get on your hands and knees in order to be close enough to the ground to actually penetrate the sand.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“No, the spear should be fine,” I say flatly.

I conjure my kit to me and open up my own weapons load out. I select a six-shooter revolver called the Hammer. Within seconds, the rusty little pocket rocket materializes into my hand. This is the most unwanted weapon in town, used exclusively for the Game Start Screen ritual. As soon as the ceremony ends, and the next kid is selected, the gun is transferred over to the lucky contestant, assigned to their kit with a lock for an entire year, until your own ceremony. The thing is, the gun has been used in this ritual for at least a hundred years, as far as I know. When the town handed the gun over to my father in his year, he’d managed to reassemble the rubber grip to the handle — more than others could say I’m sure — but the trigger’s hammer never budged. Or, so he says. I have a theory why he’s still here: a brother or sister we don’t know about. Father. Or mother. Auctioned just when he was about to be escorted from town. But that’s neither here nor there, now.

I take a good look at the thing. The chambered reel of the six-shooter wrenched from its socket, silver stripped over the decades, bullets — somewhere. I almost walked straight back up to the mayor at the podium and volunteered to go into the open-world when he’d authorized the download to my kit in front of the crowd. But it’s been alright to me. Haven’t always found worthy metal substitutes for bullets, but when the going gets rough, I’ll put in the hours it takes to make a kill with a million pebbles if I have to. Piece of crap, half the parts out of stock, most shops afraid to even look at it. My father tried to make the point that the least I could do is hold my head up high around town, you know, shake some hands, kiss some babies — let the people know that the gun might not work but that’s not what matters. That I’ll be alright, even though I’m about to be thrown into a blood bath somewhere outside the town. But I know what he really meant. Take it easy for a year, sweetie, then sell your mother when you get to the stage. That’s the difference between me and my father, and how I got the gun to work. He fakes keeping his head high. I skipped this nonsense. In my opinion, kissing your baby is your job. Period.

Well, not exactly period. I have developed some limits. Like stealing, cheating, or hurting anyone in our town to try to get my way. I’ve had to really remind myself of this a lot lately, ever since I jail-broke the schematics of the gun. That’s how I got it to work, really. A guy named Randy on the bottom side of town who’s crafty in the digital space. Has his hands in a bit of dark stuff from what I hear, much darker than jail-breaking, so I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t pushing the line too much. But even that, even simply augmenting the range of possibilities for the gun’s ammo to pebble sized rocks felt much more mischievous than it sounds. But what was I supposed to do? There haven’t been any bullets for this gun here in years. Should I let myself get escorted out of the town because I didn’t reach the point threshold by my ceremony? Let them take me from my family, especially Petey? Or worse, sell my injured and disabled mother in place of me, then walk around town as if nothing happened at all?

“Look,” Caitlyn says. “I have some extra items I don’t need, like dice, and my sister’s old baby shoes.” She stares at me blankly, then blinks. “That I could throw at the ground.”

I stare at her back, unsure of where she’s going with this. I said the spear would be fine. “Oh-kay?” I say, then drop my head, as though I understood. Then I realize that she’s just trying to do her best on my last day. Trying to be a good companion. And right now, probably over doing it. I don’t want her to bend over backwards for me. As I begin to look back up, I notice Caitlyn scrumming through her kit again.

“No really, Caitlyn,” I say. “It’s the last day, it should be—.” I stop short. Instead of dice and baby shoes, Caitlyn holds up an AR-18 equipped with a scope and silencer. Absolutely nothing easy to come by. And I’m shocked. Not by the idea, but that she actually has the gun.

“Caitlyn!” I say. “Where on earth did you get this?”

“Randy,” she says flatly. Then she gives me this look like, did you really think I came out here with you on your last day to fling dice at beetles? “Are you down or what?” she says.

I don’t even consider it for a moment. The idea. Her idea, with the gun. She’s been floating this stuff for a while now, but I never actually took her serious. The kinds of things she always muttered were, “you think we can find anything bigger?” or “there’s more points out here somewhere, I just know it”. And those were the times we were Long Hog Rampaging. She never really came out her mouth directly with it, but I took it to mean she was willing to kill someone in town. Maybe even a few people, for the points. The thought sends a shiver up my spine.

But the idea isn’t just reckless for its inhumanity only. Not necessarily. She has no idea, or at least I don’t think she has any idea, of what else lurks around our town, like a mist in a rainstorm, almost unseen. Sure, our town has its customs, and history, and the god awful ritual that randomly selects one of the seventeen-years-olds each year to repopulate the open-world. Heck, to most, the biggest reason to hold your kids a little tighter each night is the audacity of the ritual. How it’s advertised as some sort of paradise, or worse, advertised as a game that anybody can win—even a baby—like a beckoning to all who want to play in the open-world, as though any of us have extra lives. But it’s no secret here we’re animals to the player characters, and one step inside the open-world and we’d be slaughtered for the coinage like Caitlyn and I farm the beetles for theirs.

But no, that’s not the scandal, really. The real mystery is what’s behind the gears of this town. How the clock turns midnight at all. I’ve seen some of it. Things out of place. Objects moving that shouldn’t be. Rarely, but I’ve noticed. But only after I became the next contestant in this ritual. For instance, the morning after I’d received the gun, a cat was waiting behind a stop sign when I’d walked out of the house. And I don’t mean it was just sitting there. It was as if my very presence was what the cat was waiting for. Or aiming to acknowledge. Or measure. Or maybe take note of. It seemed to have taken a snapshot of me through its eyes, and only after it was done with its appraisal of me, did it turn and walk off, natural-like.

For the next few weeks, I began to notice more and more things around town, somehow adjusting to my presence in a way that didn’t happen before. And if I even so much as tried to explain it, or mention it, to anyone, young or old, it was as if I were speaking another language. Or not speaking loudly enough. “What?” I remember old man Mr. Langston down the street say. “I didn’t catch that.” But it wasn’t his hearing. I tried and tried to repeat myself, and always the same answer. Same with Petey. Same with my father. What. I didn’t catch that. Eventually, I just shut my mouth.

“I can’t,” I say, at almost a whisper.

“What?” Caitlyn says.

“I can’t.” I repeat, and I mean it. I can’t because one day, after asking all those people, and trying to get an answer, trying to get an answer about this whole thing and the ritual, I got fed up and went to Randy for that same gun. The next morning, I found the cat lying dead by the stop sign. Blown to bits. I only recognized the piece that was its snout because it had a distinct pattern in its nose fur that didn’t resemble any of the other cats around here. Even worse, it wasn’t an AR. Someone, or something, was making a point. They’ve got the big gun, and I don’t, so don’t even try it. Just stick to the revolver, play by the rules, and take your turn at The Game Start Screen like the rest of them. Like we made it.

I always imagine that last part—like we made it—actually being spoken by someone, under their breath, somewhere far-off in a room full of gadgets and knobs and screens or something. Some person at level one hundred, some z-class all-star brute of the player character’s community. But the truth is, I don’t know. I just know what I saw, and the precision of it. Whether or not it has a face makes no difference to me. The message was clear. Don’t even try it.

Caitlyn balls up her fist, and I can see she almost wants to explode. But then her eyes fill with water, and I can’t do anything but hug her. A few moments in, she grips me tight in return, and through a heavy whimper, I hear her whisper. “I just don’t want to see you leave. Not out there. Not like them.”

I want to say something back, but I can’t. It hurts to try to say anything at all, so I just stand there, feeling her hug me.