Chris could feel the stares on the back of her neck as she took her place at the front of the line. She inserted her b-link into one of the dispensing machines like she had seen countless others do. Part of her really wanted to look around and find out who was staring at her, but she knew that might invite a confrontation, which wasn’t at all what she was looking for on her first day. She kept her eyes forward and a couple seconds later a meal tray came out from a lower slot, containing the same gruel she had seen on countless other trays. It looked about as appetizing as sand, but she wasn’t about to comment on it to her new, possibly hostile, definitely criminal, housemates.

Leaving the food dispensing area with her tray in hand, she walked toward the tables, making a mental seating chart of all the prisoners she recognized. Chris also tried to take note of which ones seemed to show a greater deal of interest in the ‘fresh meat’ but gave up when she realized it was basically every convict in the room. Until that very moment, she hadn’t realized how well her Lucky man, had prepared her. He had told her that in a perfect world, she wouldn’t have to interact with any of the prisoners. They lived in a very far from perfect world and he had warned her that if she wanted to survive in it, she better be ready for prison politics.

Chris continued walking down the aisle with the whole cafeteria eyeing her back until she finally reached a table she thought didn’t belonged to any of the three major groups the prisoners tended to divide themselves into. She did not recognize a single face at the table, which already endeared her to the idea of sitting at it. If she didn’t know them, Lucky hadn’t included their mugshot in his brief, meaning they weren’t important in the prison’s hierarchy, meaning she could have a last breakfast of peace before thinking about dealing with the whole problem.

‘Complete breakfast peace so I  can make sure I’m not about to make any really stupid mistakes.’

Two of the six inmates at the table seemed to be fully occupied by the task of shoving the gruel down their throats as fast as they could. At those speeds, it was quite surprising, and even more impressive, that all the food made it to their mouths. Further down, three distinctly different women whose only similarity was their elderliness, were eating as if the meal was taking place at the Buckingham Palace. She couldn’t be sure from where she stood, but Chris could have sworn that she heard them exchange pleasantries like, “I had quite a fitful sleep last night. What about you? Were you able to sleep past that headache you complained about last night?”

Watching the very weird trio of ladies was one of the most surreal moments of Chris’s life and she couldn’t help smiling in part quizzical amusement and part total incomprehension.

‘How is this happening in prison right now?! Well at least they seem more interested in their tea party than my presence.’

It was a nice change compared to the rest of the room that while still going about their business, felt like they had a corner of one eye dedicated just to her. A couple of days ago, the mere thought of being watched by a room full of criminals would probably of scared her, but other than another mental note in her analysis of her situation, she didn’t give the room at her back another thought.

Chris had already moved to sit at the table when she took stock of the last woman seated. She was eating slowly, but it was clear that she didn’t have any illusions about the food in front of her being anything but gruel. Taking a seat across from her, Chris took stock of the woman’s appearance trying to judge what kind of person she was. She had long, straight graying black hair with a pronounced white streak at her temple that followed her hair in a white band to its ends. Her face was narrow and her lips thin, she had Asian features that made it impossible to gauge her age. Chris would have said mid-twenties but the hair obviously hinted towards something higher. She wasn’t what you would call beautiful, but there was a certain elegance to her appearance that drew the eye.

“I’m crazy.” The woman suddenly said, startling Chris who had just picked up her spork.

“I-I… Ah…” Chris drew a blank.

“Trying to categorize me won’t help. I am crazy, anyone here will tell you that.” She said before looking down the table and shouting, “Isn’t that right girls?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Batshit crazy.”

Multiple voices spoke at once, cutting off the longer reply from one of the tea-party ladies. “... to an insane asylum. But I don’t think they have the facilities to handle you there, do they, Doris?” Said the oldest looking one with shockingly white hair that contrasted with her dark skin.

“Yes, well…” Doris replied somewhat smugly.

Chris would have labeled the woman as completely harmless in her mind had she not seen the right side of her face when she turned. It harboured a massive jagged scar that ran all the way from her temple to her jaw, stretching skin on her face like it was made from rubber. The right corner of her lip was pulled slightly toward her jaw, permanently placing a slight smirk on her face.  

She tried to calm her stomach as her mind processed the origins of the scar. It looked like someone had taken a blunt knife and hacked away at the flesh in attempts to peel it off from the bone, as if they were trying to pull the woman’s face off. For some unexplainable reason though, Chris suspected that someone hadn’t done that to her, but that she had done it to herself. She couldn’t help but glance back at Doris who was calmly looking at her with impenetrable dark grey eyes. Thankfully Chris couldn’t see much of the scar when she looked at the woman head on, but something about the woman’s expression made her think that the woman had done it on purpose.

‘Is she trying to gauge my reactions? As much as she claims she is crazy… she doesn’t seem crazy. She actually seems pretty intelligent… Not that getting the better of me on my first day in prison is a hard thing to accomplish... Could she be the leader of the Anonymous group? The brief did say to be on the lookout since the leader of…’

“You should hurry up and eat Dearie.” Doris said breaking into Chris’s thoughts, before going back to eating her own gruel.

Chris looked down at her own and felt her stomach turn in revolt again. It looked like toothpaste mixed with oatmeal and had a grainy beige appearance that was only made more unappetizing by the part plastic and part seaweed smell it had.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?” Doris asked before looking at her b-link. “You have exactly twelve minutes to eat all of that…” She motioned to Chris’s food with her spork. “Otherwise they’ll only log you in with the next batch.”

“The next batch?” Chris asked.

The woman looked at her the way a mother looks at a child who repeats the same question it has already received an answer to. She ignored Chris until she ate the last couple of spoonfuls of her gruel. Then she set down her spork, laid her elbows on the table, linked her hands and said, “How about you eat and I talk. I like talking. Not everyone does you know, as well they shouldn’t. Some people just have nothing to contribute, all we can do is hope that they know that.”

“Wh—”

“Typically eating does not involve the activation of vocal chords. And if you don’t eat everything the dispenser gave you, they won’t let you play. In fact, they won’t let you leave this room.”

“B—”

“Child. Shut up, would you? I will tell you everything you need to know. Well… that is not entirely true. I will tell you everything I want you to know. And there is no point in asking questions because the scope of that everything would not change with your intervention.” Doris said and waited a second, as if baiting Chris to ask anything. When she didn’t, but merely started shoveling the gruel like the two women from earlier,  Doris continued.

“You learn more from listening than talking. Just think about it, when you’re talking all you’re doing is hearing things you already know. When I am talking you are hearing things I know which, we both know, you don’t. Because let’s face it, you’re more green than grass.” The woman took a slight pause in her monologue to evaluate Chris, who had by this point found out that the gruel tasted just as bad, if not worse, as it looked and smelled.  

When Chris didn’t say anything in response but kept shoveling the distasteful substance down her throat Doris continued talking. “Yes, I know. Most displeasing that. But you get used to it, can’t have prison be just a big game now can we?” Doris smiled widely at that before continuing. “You have to eat that because your b-link won’t let you leave the room until you have ingested all of it. It calculates exactly what your body needs for that day. The calories, the nutrients, the vitamins… it’s a little excessive if you ask me. But then again, you didn’t. Just know that if you want to play Era, which I assume you do, you need to finish that or the guards won’t take escort you out. And the next batch of players will only be in an hour and you really don’t want to lose an hour. That’s five hours in Era, you can do a lot in five hours of Era. And you my dear, need to do a lot in five hours of Era.”

“You see these vultures around this room?” Doris asked with a vague hand movement that gestured towards all of the convicts around them.

Chris almost instinctively turned her head to look around, but fought it down and instead kept eating, thinking it was probably not a good idea to let people know what Doris was talking about. It was also probably not a good idea to look at people and display unnecessary interest either. When Chris didn’t miss a beat, Doris smiled with a slight hint of a smirk which Chris translated to a small congratulatory verdict.

‘She’s… testing me. But why? Who is she, and what does she want? I need to be careful with what I say. I can’t tie myself down to anyone right now. It’s not in the plans…’

Chris looked up to see Doris smiling at her, her skin crinkling at the very edges of her slanted eyes. It was the first time she actually noticed an age related feature on the woman’s face other than her graying hair. It was quite disconcerting, but the most disconcerting part was that she felt like Doris knew exactly what she was thinking. Like Doris had purposefully made her think those things.

“Well.” Doris continued as if nothing had happened, making Chris feel like she must have been imagining things. “They all want to see in what category you’ll end up. A player, a grinder or a dud.”

Chris continued to shovel food while Doris talked. By now she wasn’t even registering the repugnant taste anymore and was grateful as it allowed her to spend more attention on Doris.

“A player, as the name suggests, plays most of the day. The number of players has gone up quite a bit, but it still is a coveted group to be in. You only become a player if you show real talent in the game. The warden keeps track of those he considers to have talent, he uses them to…” Doris smiled widely before continuing. “I see you already know something of our warden. Interesting.”

Chris tried to, but she knew she couldn’t hide her surprise at how easily this woman seemed to be reading her. She was becoming more and more certain that there was nothing crazy about her. The thought reminded her of the other women at the table, but when she looked down, they were nowhere to be seen. Chris quickly checked her b-link and saw that she only had three minutes left, many of the other inmates were already leaving the cafeteria.

“Don’t you worry Child. I’ll get you there on time. Especially since I don’t have to explain about the warden.” Doris smiled enigmatically. It was clear that she was goading her, making her wonder exactly how much the woman had intended to tell her in the first place. She was purposefully making her uncertain of how much of the whole she knew, and how much she had lost out merely because of her inability to hide her thoughts.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

‘I need to work on my poker face.’

Chris thought as she shoveled the last of her gruel down her throat.

Doris lowered her hands palm-down on the table and continued. “All you really need to know is that after everyone knows what category you fall into, you will be either coveted or used. The one thing you won’t be is left in peace like you were today. You can’t ignore prison politics my dear, you’re in prison now and the vote is mandatory.”

“But how—”

“Will they know if you’re any good? Nothing is private in this world Dearie, what made you think prison would be any different. If anything, everything is more public than it ever was. The warden releases a daily ranking of all the inmates. If you’re in the bottom one hundred, otherwise known as a dud, you’re assigned to maintenance. That roster doesn’t really change much, some people just aren’t any good at the game. And if you’re not good to begin with, it’s almost impossible to work your way into more game time.” She picked up her tray and stood up, motioning with her head for Chris to follow suit.

“With only the government minimum of two hours, you can’t get anything done. At least not when you’re comparing yourself to people who play four or five times as much as you. Sometimes even more.” Chris walked beside the woman who, shockingly, turned out to be only a head taller than her. A very unusual occurrence for someone of Chris’s height. She was used to people towering over her and had expected the same if not more from Doris. There was something about her that made her seem, for the lack of better terms, otherworldly.It was almost like this world annoyed her in its simplicity.

“Finally, we have the grinders. That, my Child, consists of most of the population here. You do not want to be a grinder, but unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to jump straight into being a player. Especially if you have never played before…” Doris gave Chris a sidelong glance before smiling. “Yes, I didn’t think so.”

Chris frowned at herself.

‘Damnit. Poker face. Poker face.’

“Well, in that case. You need to prepare yourself. The only reason you haven’t become someone’s minion yet is because they don’t know if you’re any good. Once in a blue moon, we get one of those. And in Goldilocks, Era is power. And power, might I remind you, is ev—although…” There was another sidelong glance before she placed her empty tray on the collection belt. “No, I guess I don’t need to remind you.”

Doris smiled.

Chris placed her tray down and followed Doris’s measured steps toward the exit where a guard waited. Glancing at her b-link she saw that she had just a little under a minute.

When Doris didn’t say anything further, Chris said. “Basically. Players are the good ones. Duds are bad. Grinders are the common, powerless, folk. Nothing is secret. I need to keep my head down, my mouth shut and work on my poker face.”

The woman beside her stopped a couple meters in front of the guard and smiled, for the first time showing a row of perfectly white, slightly sharpened teeth. A sharpness that required a bone-file.

Chris worked on keeping her face passive, trying to hide her horror-laced aversion.  

“Better. But still pretty horrendous.” Doris said and then teased her by biting at the air in front of her. She rolled her eyes when Chris refused the bait. “Well, since you were such a willing pupil… Is there anything else you want to know? I’ll answer one question.”

“Why did you tell me all of this?” Chris immediately asked.

“Because Child. It was information anyone could have told you, information you would have found out eventually. By telling you, I lose nothing. If anything, I gain part of your trust and you feel a little indebted to me. A feeling I might just use in the future. In addition to that, I now have some valuable information in regards to you. Information that quite a few people in this room might want…”

Chris saw the groups of women still milling by the exits looking at her and grew apprehensive.

“Psh, Child. Why would I tell them anything right now? I play the long game… and so should you. If you think the game only begins when you enter that capsule, you are sorely mistaken. But… I don’t think you live under that misapprehension, do you?” Doris smiled one last time as the guards were beginning to call order, rounding up the women they would be taking for their capsule time. The woman ended up being assigned to another guard and started leaving the hall before Chris’s group.

“Plus.” Doris added with a real smirk, completely independent of her scar. “I think you might be one of those that takes us all by surprise. I consider you a shrewd investment.”

Chris watched the woman’s waist-length gray hair as she walked down the hall in single-file following one of the guards. She came to the realization that although the woman had done all the talking, Chris had ended up revealing more of herself even in silence. The woman remained a mystery. Turning her attention to the guard who was still calling other inmate numbers to join her group, she felt a tap on her right shoulder.

She turned around to see a girl about her age, with a massive head of brown hair with red and orange ‘sun-kissed’ streaks. Chris had no idea where this girl had found make-up in prison, but she looked like a little doll. Even if she was quite a bit taller than herself. “You’re new too right?”

“...Yea.” Chris replied, looking at the girl more closely. She looked rich. Not that the standard clothing gave anything away, but the way she looked at her surroundings and everyone gave her that same arrogant air she remembered from Eddie. One of the only rich people she had known. She had met Suerte recently, but he didn’t have the same rich ‘air’ that she had come to associate with them.

“I’m Yaz. Nice to meet you.” Chris could tell that she didn’t think it was nice at all. “Do you know where they are taking us?” She said in a voice that seemed to be more of a command than a question. How the girl managed to do that when it was worded as a question she did not know.

Chris felt like ignoring her, but then two thoughts popped into her head.

‘First. I am in prison. I have no idea who’s a psycho-killer and who is just a normal killer. Second. Didn’t I just learn that no exchange in prison is free of ties? Time to put theory into practice.’

“I’m Chris. Nice to meet you too.” Chris smiled. “They are taking us to Era.” She said as if she was used to throwing that term around and hadn’t been acquainted with it just days before.

“Ohhh. Right. The rehabilitation incentive… Do you think that actually works?” She leaned in while looking around in what she probably thought was a furtive action, but was really plain as day. Chris felt a little uncomfortable with all the attention the girl was making her get from other inmates. Meanwhile, she remained completely oblivious and said in a loud whisper. “I mean I get it that they have to see shrinks once a week to ‘evaluate their progress’ and all. But does letting a bunch of criminals play games every day really help them ‘rehabilitate and integrate’? I mean—”

“Don’t you mean us?”

“... What?” The girl blinked in confusion.

“You said they, when I am pretty sure you mean us.”

“Heh.” The girl said. “I guess you are right.” Chris saw a flash of malice cross the girl’s eyes as she said that. She wanted to shudder and look away, but she fought those urges and forced herself to remain calm. At least in appearance. She was in prison now, a max-sec at that, every single person in there with her was a criminal. It was time she started acting like one.

“I have no idea if it works or not, but I am guessing we will find out soon enough.” Chris said and gave her a conspiratorial smile.

“Hmm. So Era huh? Guess they won’t let me keep my character. It’s a shame really, I was already level one eighty two.”

“Alright ladies! Move-it!” Their guard yelled from the front of the line of about ten women. She led them out of the cafeteria and down a corridor. Chris was once again taken aback by the virtual scenery displayed on the walls. She could feel the fake warmth of the sun as it rose on the fake horizon, but it still got to her. The smell of pine trees was finally more powerful than that plastic-seaweed smell of the cafeteria and she couldn’t help taking a deep breath to clear her mind, concentrating on every nuance of the fragrance. As she did so she felt a small pinch of a headache right behind her temple, but forgot about it when Yaz said. “I was a berserker and I loved it. But for the sake of… rehabilitation, I think I shall try my hand at being a shaman. What about you?”

Chris continued looking ahead wondering if she should reply or not. If she did, the girl might find out that she had never played before. If she didn’t she would lose the opportunity to gather more information.

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

“I don’t know yet, I don’t believe in choosing classes before I even know where and what I am playing with. Too much depends on the particular situation to go in making decisions like that. For now I am more concerned with choosing my character and starting location.” She said flatly, as if a person would have to be a retard not to know it by heart already.

Chris didn’t look back immediately to see the girl’s reaction to her fib, but instead waited for the guard to reach the first set of doors that had to be unlocked by more than just personnel authorization. While the guard talked to someone in command, Chris looked over her shoulder and added, “Don’t you think?”

She knew she was pushing her luck by basically calling the girl stupid to her face especially if she had really been only forty levels short of the current highest level player in the game. Especially considering who and where they were. Fortunately though, the girl just shrugged and played with her hair.

“Yes. I guess you’re right. Do you know where you are starting yet? I was just going to start in Urubriel like I did last time, since I know the layout and all, but maybe…” She hesitated. “Well, what do you think?”

This time the question came out sounding like an actual question, and the rich arrogance of the girl, while not completely gone, wasn’t the defining quality of her speech anymore. Chris smiled to herself as the guard let them through the open door.

‘Not bad for a first move, now I just can’t mess it up.’ Chris glanced forwards to see they had at least another minute of following the guard. That gave her enough time to complete her newly devised plan, but much more than that would most certainly reveal the fact that she had no idea what she was talking about. She would have to choose her words carefully if she wanted this to work.

Her mind was working double-time trying to orchestrate how exactly everything was going to fit together. She hadn’t expected to set her in-game plan into motion before she even had a character, but there she was. Part of her knew she was building a house of cards and pretense, but if it all worked out, this new development would probably cut months off of her original estimates. These possibilities were all running around her head, but somehow she still felt calm. She still felt in control. Something she had rarely felt in her lifetime, but especially the last six years.

As she followed the single-file of convicts ahead of her and thought of the next set of words she would deliver to the one behind her, only one thing was absolutely certain. She was glad she had met Doris. Certain things in life you can only learn by having them done to you.