“What the?” I said.

“Yeah… now isn’t that interesting,” Max replied.

Slade and Emma were just bringing their horses up. So, I said hello to Midnight and Sweetgrass.

“What was that about? What were you two up to?” Slade asked.

“We were talking about the Enneaxia language,” Max said.

“Really? What about it?” Emma seemed very excited that we were delving deeper into her pet project.

“We were talking about how they communicate,” Max said. He showed them his notes and explained that the only duplicate words we’d discovered were three letters long, and it was possible the entire message was composed of three-letter words.

Slade scratched his chin, “Doesn’t sound like you could have much of a language with only three letter words.”

“Very astute,” I said. When he gave me a hurt puppy-dog look, I continued, “No, I’m serious. With twenty-seven characters in combinations of three, you can only have about twenty thousand words. English has a half million.”

“To which,” Max continued for me. “I suggested that maybe they don’t need words because they communicate primarily with something else, like telepathy.”

“Or empathy,” Emma suggested.

“Okay, let's say that was the case. If the Enneaxia communicate in some other form, would a small written language be enough to convey critical information?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question. None of us were language experts. Even with the surprise discovery that Emma was a polyglot she couldn’t answer the question at hand.

I knew someone that might be able to, “Kane… Um, operator.”

“Go for Operator,” a disembodied Kane said.

“We believe we’ve made a discovery and would like some guidance,” I said.

“I’ll help how I can, Miss Price. Go ahead with your request.”

“We are trying to decipher a note written in another language. Is there any possibility of help, like a linguist?”

There was a short pause, Kane replied, “I’m afraid we can’t help you with that.”

“Why not?” I asked. I was getting frustrated. “Any university should be able to help us solve this puzzle.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Price. The rules of The Game are that you need to solve the puzzles within The Game.”

“Even if it kills us?”

“That was the contract that you signed.”

I looked for the other three for help. Max looked up as if talking to the sky, “We have to solve this puzzle within the game. Our group all has last names starting with the letter P. Were other groups sent in to solve the same puzzles?”

“I can confirm that you are not alone in The Game,” Kane said.

“How many others have come in?”

There was another pause, “Prior to your entry, two hundred fifty-six personnel were sent in. Your team brings that two hundred sixty.”

I did the math, “Wait a second. The letter P is… sixteenth in the alphabet. If you sent in teams of four, that’s only a hundred and four people. Meaning there were a hundred and fifty-six sent in before that. Who were the earlier teams?”

Another long pause, and then Kane answered, “Military personnel, scientists, psychologists, biologists, linguists, engineers. The list is extensive.”

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

“And they are still in the game?” I asked.

“A majority of them have perished.”

We looked at each other as the thought of that sunk in. Players like us had come into the game and died trying to solve the puzzle we were working on.

“How many are left?”

“There are sixty-seven survivors, including yourselves.”

“Oh my god,” I exhaled. “That’s a survival rate of like forty percent.”

“Very close, Miss Price. It’s forty-one point eight seven five, to be precise. You are one of five teams to have all of its members.”

“How long have you been sending teams in?” I asked.

“The project started more than a year ago. In the first two months, we sent in military personnel and scientists. It did not go well. In the last seven months, we’ve sent in a team of gamers every two weeks. The gamers significantly increased the survival rates.”

“And you can’t tell us anything more about the game? Where it came from? What its the purpose is?” I said.

“I’m sorry Miss Price. That’s not possible.”

“Why?”

There was another long pause, then Kane said, “I can’t say anything more than it’s a test. Additional info has not helped previous teams.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “What do you mean by hasn’t helped? Knowing the purpose of a thing would help understand what’s being asked in regards to that thing.”

“In this case, Miss Price, it has not. It’s caused considerable harm.”

“I don’t understand…” I said.

“The makers of The Game have a very specific puzzle that needs to be solved. It can only be done with the resources inside The Game. Including other specialists who have entered before you.”

“This is insanity,” I whispered. “You have no idea who made the game do you?”

Before Kane could answer, Slade interrupted, “Look, chum! I demand to know who made the game and what we are trying to solve.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Peterson, your Charming Presence boon only affects those inside The Game.”

“Wait! What?” I looked at Slade, “You took a charm boon?”

He shrugged, “What? I like talking to the ladies.”

“Dude? What the hell? Our lives are in danger every other moment and you're worried about chatting girls up? For what? To bump digital uglies?”

“Hey! It feels exactly the same inside the game as out.”

“Gross dude. Just gross.”

Max saved us from further traveling down this path, “Resources inside the game… Are there any linguists?”

Kane replied, “Yes, Mr. Pendergrast. There is one alive in the city of Citadel.

“What can you tell us about them?” Max said.

“I can recite some of the Wikipedia page about her. Doctor Patricia Sinclair, Research Professor at the University of Washington. Your Alma mater, Miss Price. Originally from California, she received her Bachelor's at the University of California, Berkley, her Master's at Stanford, and her Ph.D at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing her schooling at age twenty-five. She returned to California, where she worked at both UC Berkley and UCLA, researching sociolinguistics, language acquisition, and cognitive linguistics. Later, she returned to Stanford, where she worked on her seminal book, The Dual Voice: Exploring Bilingual Language Processing. She took on a professorship at the UW and is now fully tenured. Beyond Wikipedia, I can also share that she has been a military contractor. The Air Force recruited her ten years ago to work with the First Encounter Operations Unit. She entered The Game roughly eight months ago. Her team did not survive.”

“First Encounter Unit?” Max asked, “As in alien first contact?”

“Highly classified, Mr. Pendergrast. However, given your situation, I can reveal that the unit was formed for more than just extraterrestrials. The unit is responsible for contact with any intelligent life. They did some groundbreaking research on the proto-languages of Dolphins and Whales.”

“Have they made contact with other intelligences?” Max asked.

“My apologies Mr. Pendergrast, but I cannot reveal any further information on this issue.”

“What the hell?” I growled. “You just gave us an encyclopedic exposition on this linguist, literally the first time you haven’t played the ‘that’s classified’ card, and now you are yanking our access?”

“Again, my apologies. The rules of what info can and cannot be shared have been tailored very specifically to protect the players.”

“Who made these ridiculous rules?” I was getting close to yelling.

“A team of top psychologists specializing in surviving stress and trauma-laden environments. Discovery is one component of The Game. Our experience has been that teams going in knowing the full picture have a much lower survival rate than those who start out thinking it's just a game. As I said earlier, we’ve become much more successful once we started sending gamers in.”

“Wow,” Slade said. “We’re guinea pigs for aliens.”

“No,” Emma replied, “We’re envoys for another intelligence.”

Her statement gave me the willies. If she’d said aliens, I’d have been fine, but plenty of people thought UFOs were demons and angels, not to mention multiverses, deep aquatic life forms, or Cthulu’s. There were a lot of Pandora Boxes I didn’t want to fool around with.

“Kane?” I said. “You can’t tell us anything about the intelligence we are trying to communicate with?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss Price. Of the remaining survivors, more than half have severe psychological trauma.”

“How did they get this trauma?” I asked.

“Direct contact with the other intelligence.”

I looked at Emma, the one person in our party talking to fires.

A message flashed:

Gained: Experience

Achievement: Level Seven