Heaving a heavy sigh and shaking his head slowly, he glanced down at the table again. Beneath where the wallet had lain lay a single card. He narrowed his eyes and picked it up. The writing was small, but his eyes were pretty good.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
He thought about that for awhile, reaching for the water bottle and taking a long pull. Was he really doing this? He examined the card carefully, turning it this way and that. Maybe a third again larger than an SD card, the stone itself was nearly featureless. Wait. No. one corner had a notch cut out of it, just like a regular SD card, with a groove —a very short and shallow groove— on one face. So, was that the top or bottom? Given it was on the side with the label, he decided he’d go with up and hope for the best.
It took three tries before he could force himself to slot the card into his skull, his eyes squinted tight shut, his teeth clenched. Nothing happened at first, and he unclenched his eyelids, opening one eye experimentally as he released some of the pressure from his jaw.
“System initiating,” a calm female voice announced inside his head. He jumped and swung half around, but he was still, at least physically, alone.
“System active,” the voice continued. “adjusting to brain wave pattern. Establishing retinal connectivity.
“Please repeat after me,” the voice altered to a tone of command. “Hello. Goodbye. I am hungry. How are you?” it went on for awhile, pausing every two or three sentences for his response.
Eventually, “Voice activation calibrated. Command to open UI is ‘UI Status’. Command to display map is, ‘UI Map’ . Further commands may be found in supplementary documentation. It is advised that you familiarize yourself with all commands prior to engaging in combat. Well, he should hope so.
“Do you accept terms and conditions?” the voice asked. A window appeared before him, hanging in space.
He groaned and slid the chair away from the table, thumping his behind down on the hard wooden seat. Experimentally, he raised a finger and laid it against the wall of text, flicking up. The text scrolled down too fast to follow, but he flicked again. And again. And again. Densely packed, single-spaced, small font, and at least forty pages long. Damned thing read like the terms and conditions for a dodgy credit card. But he was going to read it. Every word, maybe more than once.
A couple of things became clear over the next hour or so as he struggled through legalese at least as dense as the format used to convey it. Firstly, the word, ‘system’ appeared a whole lot. Secondly, no matter how closely he read, no matter how often he went over the document, there was no hint of what he was agreeing to do, no mentions of potential reward, or penalties, and absolutely no method of backing out other than remaining in this room. Each time he declined, no more happened than he found himself staring at the same page with the same two choices. The only way out, as they say, was forward.
He was scowling as he finally hit the accept key if just because it was the only way to dismiss the window.
Without moving, he looked straight ahead and said “UI Map.” A screen appeared in the upper right corner of his field of view. Mostly black, with a small smudge of lighter color in its center. He reached forward and placed his non-bloodied left index finger and thumb on either side of the smudge and spread them. As suspected, the image zoomed in. So, he decided. Smart phone controls then?
Once he’d brought the image close enough to fill half the screen, he grunted irritably. This room. Sure, the detail was pretty good, but it was just the room he was in, surrounded by a field of black.
He tried moving the screen around with his fingers as well as expanding and contracting it. His earlier hunch seemed to be holding. “Exit UI Map,” he ordered. Nothing. “UI Map, Exit,” he tried. Nope. “UI Map, dismiss.” Still more nope. “So how the hell do I dismiss the map?” he wondered aloud. The map vanished.
He blinked. “UI Map.” The map returned, thankfully retaining the changes he’d already made. “Dismiss the map.” Okay. “UI Map. Dismiss map.” Uh huh. “Map.” Nothing. “UI instructions.” Yeah, like that was gonna work, he frowned. Wait! “UI Manual!” A window that looked eerily like a PDF reader popped into view. His frown vanished as though it had never been.
Sliding the manual to the side, he turned his head this way and that. The window remained stationary. Looking straight ahead, he said, “UI Status.” A new screen appeared before him. Four new screens, to be precise. The farthest left, and the tallest, was a silhouette, listing various points. Upper torso, lower torso, legs, arms, etc. he was half surprised to see that he wouldn’t be limited to one or two rings.
He paused, staring between the screen and down at his own body. So, the leather pants, boots, and vest had armor values, but the linen shirt didn’t. Unsurprisingly, the screen listed nothing more. So, equipped items only. Par for the course, he supposed, glancing towards the table.
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Above the silhouette, there were three entries. The left entry was grayed out, and he couldn’t read it. The central showed Player Level 0. Okay, player. So he was a player of some sort. That tracked. On the other hand, zero? What was he, an NPC villager or something? That did not bode well for his survival.
The readout on the right was a red bar topped by a woefully low number. He’d played enough video games to know what that number meant. And unless there were things that hit for considerably less than one point of damage per strike, he was likely playing on survival mode. Of course. Why wouldn’t he be?
The upper central window showed a pip centered in a long, horizontal line. So, compass heading? He brought the map back, sliding it to the left side of the status screens. He twisted in his chair and the pip slid along the line while the orientation of the map rotated around to match.
Beneath the compass pip, the window was filled with a lot of not much. Must be something to do with that supplemental documentation, yeah?
The right side window was another silhouette, with the same notations, but without any entries. A companion? Maybe? If he acquired one? He hesitated over what to do with it. He didn’t want to screw around trying to selectively dismiss windows before he’d gotten some quality time with the manual. He let it be for now.
The lower central window was another blank expanse. Marvelous.
He gave the glowing invitation another hard look before regaining his feet and turning to the table, struggling a little with all of the only semi-transparent windows occluding his line of sight .
He figured out the belt pretty quick. Slide the leather through the loop, over, under, and tuck it behind the belt to dangle cowboy style. Then he had to take it back off and work it through the loops in the frog.
The instant he’d secured the belt around his waist the second time, the leftmost and lower center windows changed. The belt now registered as equipped, of course, but now a thumbnail of a basketed sword appeared in the upper central window with a 1: beside it. On the silhouette, the right hand station lit up, the legend now reading, “Bilbo, No augments.” Who the what, now? He thought. On a hunch, he poked a finger into the thumbnail. Sure enough, a sub-window popped up.
Bilbo: 18th century Basque or Spanish. Cup hilted rapier with traditional 32” broadsword blade. Effective on both the cut and thrust. Augments, 0 of 3.
Well, he supposed. It beat club or a -2 iron sword of rustiness.
The dagger sheath had thongs he looped around the belt and tied, sliding it to his left rear, with the grip angled left. The UI called this a maine gauche. Its blade was easily a foot long, and it had a solid, sail-shaped hand guard and long quillons. The UI claimed it to have two open augment slots.
The big pouch turned out to have a shoulder strap, which was good, as the idea of hanging it from his belt didn’t seem all that appealing. He opened it wide and looked inside. At which point he had to fight a bout of vertigo. The interior was a pit of blackness, like looking down a narrow well. He hauled his head back and canted it over, looking beneath the pouch and then back inside. He stuck an arm through the strap and ducked his head beneath it. Instantly a number appeared in the formerly blank lower central window. Oho! Inventory, then.
He had no clue what the number represented, though. Encumbrance, obviously, but calculated how? Number of items, cubic feet of storage, some arbitrary number that only made sense to the devs. Or, he supposed in this case, the system. He settled the pouch against his right hip and started loading things from the table into it. The number at the top of the window didn’t iterate down for each item, so it wasn’t that. By the same token, it didn’t iterate up in any way he could equate with real world weight. Most importantly, it didn’t have an upper number. Did that mean the bag’s capacity was infinite? Yeah, right! He should be so lucky.
Completely aside from the inventory notations, the bag didn’t seem to gain any perceptible weight as he filled it. There wasn’t all that much on the table, but certainly enough for him to have felt the weight. The potions alone must have weighed eight or ten pounds. He supposed he’d find out whether the bag made the weight vanish or merely diminish as he loaded crap into it. The disconcerting thing was that, not only couldn’t he feel the weight, but looking down into the bag, he couldn’t see any of what he was putting inside either.
As the inventory window populated, items started running off the screen. A quick test showed he could scroll it, so that was good. Picking an item at random, he poked his finger into the inventory window and reached his hand into the bag without looking. Sure enough....
At least the system wasn’t sending him into the unknown with garbage.
He moved to the stuff hanging from the peg. The outermost item was a leather slouch hat with a wide, forest green band, which also had an armor value. The hat, the UI informed him, not the band. Sweet. Beneath that was a roughspun cloak with a deep hood— his eyes widened and a grin broke across his face.
Hanging from the peg beneath the cloak was a strung bow and leather quiver. Now, that he knew how to drive! Better yet, both the bow and arrows, of which there were a couple of dozen, were sized for his draw. He hauled back on the string, noting the draw weight. He’d pulled heavier, but not often, and not happily. Only to prove a point, in fact.
The UI informed him the bow was a yew longbow with an eighty pound draw and one of two augment slots filled. It was less forthcoming as to what the augment accomplished.
Further, it now claimed he’d equipped a clasp knife. News to him. He found it eventually, in a leather sleeve sewn to the quiver. A bowyer’s knife. He knew about them, but like the sword and dagger, had no idea how to use one.
But he now had a weapon he could actually use! Anyway, for as long as the arrows held out. He swung the cloak around his shoulders, noting that it had no armor value, and strutted around for a few more minutes before sighing and hauling all of his newfound plunder off and resuming the chair, his eye on that glowing sign.
He took another pull at the water bottle, worried he might run out before he ever got out of this room. And he’d been pointedly ignoring his stomach grumbling for awhile now. But he wasn’t going anywhere near that sign before he knew more of how this place worked. So, for now, he was going to spend some time learning the controls. He very much doubted, after having read that byzantine terms and conditions disclaimer (and why bother with such a thing?) that there would be a tutorial level on the other side.