I had always been thin-skinned. Getting on my nerves was pretty easy. Politics, insults, even backhanded jokes that people mean nothing by tend to irritate me. Most people wouldn’t admit to that, believing that that was an insult. And it is of course. But insult or not, a lot of people are just like me— they get irritated over the smallest things. Yeah, I have a thin skin.
The smallest criticism set me off, tilted me. I couldn’t bear to talk to other people for fear of offending them, of being awkward and unsettling. It wouldn’t be amiss to say that I was scared of people. At least, when it came to speaking with them. That fear didn’t help me, either. With such little experience talking to people, the few that I did talk to found me a strange recluse who was best ignored.
I wasn’t ugly or unhygienic. At least, I hoped I wasn’t. When my coworkers saw me around the warehouse, no one bothered to speak to me. Just as well, I was terrified of speaking to them too. There had always been just one exception though.
Video games. Yeah yeah, we’ve all played games where you could make your character and act in a way completely disconnected from how you usually would. Be an absolute ass, be selfless beyond reason, or just act more confident than you’d ever be in real life. In single player games, that was easy. Even in online games though, the fear that plagued me vanished.
Call it what you want. Was it the anonymity? Something like that old saying, “Give a man a mask and he’ll show you his true face.” Online disinhibition was the technical term for it, I think.
Whatever it was, it worked for me.
So it was that I absolutely adored the newest Altera device. Back when VR consisted of little more than a gyroscope and a monitor strapped to your face, Altera had been the forerunner of VR tech alongside competitors like Oculus and Vive. Alteras had always been, frankly, better. They were the first to be wireless. The first to include body tracking. The first to well and truly insert you into virtual reality.
Five years ago, the company had its breakthrough hit, the Altera 1.0, a device that would quite literally immerse you into a virtual realm, replete with physical sensations and fully able to fool the mind into believing that the space was indeed reality. Of course, there were limitations.
The Altera required surgery to function. A small injection was necessary to insert a neural link to the mind through the spinal cord. Apparently, the process took no longer than five minutes. When the surgery was finished, all that was needed to start a play session was to lie down on your bed and you were in, like a hyper realistic dream. Surgery was always a frightening prospect, however, and despite its literally game changing features, the Altera 1.0 would unfortunately be purchased by only a few dedicated gamers. Such as moi.
Other complications arose as well. Risk in possible interference with brain development led to the minimum age for usage being 19, cutting out about half of the market already. Additionally, the device was far from true VR. Physical sensations in VR felt lacking and, unlike what many had hoped, it was a prerequisite that your body in virtual reality had to be closely matched with your body in the real world. The worst accident that had ever occurred during testing had been due to a playtester trying to use a mock-up of another person’s body in-game. It had resulted in irreparable damage to the playtester’s mobility as his mind attempted to hijack the nervous system of a body that wasn’t his.
Naturally, the hope that paraplegics could experience walking or that transgender people might digitally obtain a body that fitted them faded. But for the more hopefuls who clung on, Altera had provided a means of allowing us to experience what we never could in real life. Everything from fighting monsters to more grounded concepts like risk free skydiving became available to us, imperfect as it was.
But five years was a long time. As time went on, and no noticeable drawbacks seemed to emerge from usage of Altera’s neural link, more and more people began submerging themselves into Altera’s products, which only continued to further fund new and more powerful Altera devices. The sensations felt more real and recent research lowered the age limit to only 16. Getting a neural link to play on Altera devices became akin to getting a driver's license.
All of that had led to the creation of the Altera Alpha. Unlike the other Altera devices, this went beyond a neural link. When you played, you wouldn’t lie down on your bed as if you were asleep. It was much more.
The thing was massive. About half a ton, and you had to assemble it at home or hire someone to build it. The entire device was jokingly referred to as a “VR Coffin” by detractors. The joke wasn’t without reason. It was a small white chamber, enough to comfortably fit a person inside. And yes, it was somewhat coffin-shaped.
An extremely high-tech liquid, SenseGel, filled the thing to the brim. SenseGel was what made the Alpha so unique. Even with the best VR tech around, it was still possible to sense the real world, if only slightly. That had been a major roadblock. If you were wearing a cotton shirt, chances are you could still feel it no matter how much leather the game claimed you wore. If your room smelled like garbage, everything you smelled reeked of garbage. Even putting in nose plugs or the like to block out sensation just numbed the sensation. You felt those noseplugs.
But with SenseGel, there would be no more of that. The gel numbed the entire body when you entered virtual space. Just strip off and submerge yourself. All sensations, save those you feel in VR, cease to exist. This was true immersion.
And I couldn’t wait. Waiting for the thing to finally ship was torturous, and the entire process of construction, even with two workers I’d paid to help, felt like a slow grind. But now, it was here on release day, and it was awesome. There was only one game for it right now, Delsana, which came out at the same time. But that had been hyped up nearly as much as the Alpha.
The game was supposed to show people what the Altera Alpha could really do. Every detail a person could think of would be covered.
Every minute feature would have just as much detail as the most important items or objectives. Sand would feel like sand and food would actually taste like food.
It was no more than a fantasy rpg, thematically. But it was the amount of detail put into its worlds that really sealed the deal for consumers. If you cooked in the game, even the most minor changes would be translated. Put in too much pepper and it tastes peppery. Overcook something? It’d taste burnt.
It’d also remember everything the players did. If someone carved their name into a tree, the mark would stay there for years if left alone.
The game’s story was supposed to advance through the game’s own emergent storyline AI, driven by the players. It was well and truly amazing.
I looked towards my Altera Alpha. The light blue gel looked and felt strange. Around the small pod were aesthetic glowing LED lights, illuminating the gel. There was something ethereal about it. I’d be entering true virtual reality. Like Matrix-levels of virtual reality. Sword Art Online levels. Everything before had been a sort of crude imitation of real life—but this, this was the crux of VR research. It wasn’t expected that Altera could make any further advances in VR without extremely advanced neurological research that could take upwards of a century to develop. What I was about to face was the pinnacle in immersive technology.
I disrobed and stepped in. My leg immediately was bombarded with an intensely pleasurable feeling. The gel didn’t even seem to get displaced. It was as if I’d stepped onto air. I laid flat on my back and submerged myself entirely. Luckily, there was no need for any breathing apparatus while I was under— the feeling of the material around my mouth could trigger my senses in the real world. SenseGel was partly also made up of perfluorocarbons, something that allowed you to breathe in the gel like air. Why it let you do that, I had no idea, but it was just one aspect that ensured total disconnect. No expense was spared for this, after all.
My entire body submerged, I began letting the gel do its magic. Before I knew it, the pod had closed and I was asleep.
For a brief moment , there seemed to have been absolutely nothing. Then, an incredible searing pain struck me, more excruciating that anything I had ever felt in my life. And, in another second, it was gone.
I lost all sensation completely, virtual or real. In a panic, thoughts began racing through my mind. Was I dead? This total lack of sensation wasn’t something that I’d ever experienced in all my years playing. Did the SenseGel not let me breathe properly? Was I suffocating? Did my neural link fail? There was nothing that I was able to feel. Arms, legs, all sense of touch, smell, or any other sense was gone to me. It felt as though I were little more than a blank consciousness.
I wondered how the news might report my death. Would they even report it? I wasn’t famous, but dying in VR had been unheard of. If it was reported, it’d probably be as some sensationalist headline about the dangers of VR. Surprisingly, that irked me more than anything else.
Almost in response to my growing acceptance of death, the familiar Altera UI immediately appeared before me. Thank God. Looked like I wouldn’t end up in media panic after all. That pain though, jeez. Probably just some issue with the SenseGel. That had been one of the worst pains I had remembered receiving in a long time, brief as it was. After I finished up, Altera would definitely be getting an earful from me.
Altera’s neural UI was fairly simple. Various boxes presented a clear representation of what a person could do in the menu. One box was labeled Settings while another box was labeled Library. All someone had to do to select an option was to will it in their minds. Want to open a new game? Just think of the name of the game and the console will open it for you. But the UI was just a visible representation of what you could do. For someone like me who knew the UI front to back, I imagined the name of the Alpha-exclusive title Delsana and was promptly shown the cover of the game and a confirmation screen, asking if I actually wanted to play. Of course the answer was yes.
The world around me blackened once more and I was briefly reminded of that terrifying ordeal I’d just received. Luckily the darkness didn’t last nearly as long and came without any agonizing pain. Finally, I was in.
In, and woozy as hell. That was an expected side effect. Feeling like a disembodied soul and regaining all of my senses at once would’ve been extremely taxing, so Alpha users like myself would feel a sense of numbness as we got familiarized with our virtual bodies. Other VR devices didn’t need that, since those devices still left you able to sense your surroundings in reality, however slightly. A vast array of icons cluttered up my field of view. Like the menu that appeared when you logged in, MMO games like Delsana bombarded you with visual aids to give a visual reminder of what was possible for you to do. These I mostly turned off, excluding a few, since I was more than familiar with these types of games.
I looked around the spot where I had spawned. It was a small room made up of wooden logs with similar textured flooring. A bed lay in the center of it, and right next to that was a nightstand with a candle on it. Besides a shuttered window to my right and a door to my left, there was nothing else in the room.
Even though I felt like my entire my body was recovering from being pumped full of novacaine, I managed to stumble out the door. No way would there be anymore time wasted after waiting for so long. The sun outside was surprisingly relaxing, warm even. I breathed in the air and felt surprised at how incredible it felt. In older Altera devices, breathing in would’ve also given me a breath full of my apartment’s stale air. The grass under me felt just as real too. It completely felt like real grass, down to the morning dew. Laying down on it, it felt the same as when I had touched it with my feet. Rather than the usual feeling of the fabric of my bed, it was every bit as coarse as real grass.
The rest of my senses were recovering too, and I could begin to feel my body. There was a bit of an issue, though. I felt shorter. Weird complaint, but I did. The numbness and disassociation I felt was even worse than that pseudo-novacaine. Excluding the extreme realism, something was wrong with my virtual body. It didn’t match my old one. My arms were way smaller and more toned than what I actually had. All of my body felt smaller as a matter of fact. And my skin was tanner as well. I looked down at myself… what the hell?
The numbness didn’t let me realize it until now, but just below me were two very definite bumps on my chest. And on my crotch, just below my stomach was a sudden lack of a very important part of me that was suddenly replaced with something else entirely. Oh My God. I was a girl. A straight up woman.
What the heck? Having a body even slightly different from your own was impossible without serious nerve damage. Trying to control one was supposed to be janky and uncoordinated and, though I was still a little numb, I could move my hands and legs perfectly fine.
A new thought popped in. This might’ve been a new feature of the Alpha—something that people have been craving since the first neural links had been developed: the ability to control an entirely different body than your own. But why would they have kept that feature a secret? Maybe as a surprise for new players? That just didn’t make sense. Even if it was meant to be a surprise, this was a pretty warped way of doing it. No warning whatsoever, just getting dropped into a completely different body, of the opposite sex no less.
Whatever the case, my shock quickly faded and was replaced with awe. They had actually done it. All of that huff about neurological research being decades away from allowing the use of different bodies had all been a front. The why of it I could think about later. All I could do was gawk at myself. Another thought rushed to my head.
Besides the cabin I had just emerged from was a pool of blue and fairly reflective water, perfect for seeing what I looked like. I quickly hurried down to it, stumbling on my now substantially shorter legs. Leaning my face over, I let out a sudden gasp. I knew this woman.
Well, “know” isnt quite the word I was looking for. I made this girl. As in, everything down from her skin tone to her eye color was customized by me. That’s right, she was a character I had made in a game a long time ago. This was back when “immersion” in games meant being in HD with a good art direction. Virtual reality was exclusive for those with heavy disposable income, unlike modern Altera devices which could be afforded at virtually any income bracket above poverty.
The game itself was hardly immersive even then. It had been little more than an indie RPG, with a rather beautiful art style. But it had been the first game to have ever actually made me cry and, for what little popularity it has, it’s still my favorite game of all time.
But like many games with character customization, I had opted to go with a female character. Anyways, though the protagonist was hardly special, she was who I’d chosen to play as. And as such was the character I recalled the best. Her name was Crystal, which was the default protagonist name, which I didn’t bother changing.
That would at least partially explain why I looked like her so much. But when the game had advertised “limited bodily customization,” the general expectation was elf ears and broader jawlines, not a full on sex change.
Peering back into the water, I noticed that I looked somewhat different from what Crystal looked like in the original game. Hardly unexpected, since the artsyles differed greatly. If she had been realistic though, this was probably what I imagined she’d look like. Trying to speak resulted in a contralto, not the deep voice I'd had for more than a decade.
My face was tanned, with wide green eyes framed by black hair. I was wearing some sort of light armor— it sort of looked like an insect carapace: shiny, purple, and segmented. Taking it off gave me a better view of my body. Surprisingly muscled with noticeably tanner skin than my own, I had a fairly athletic physique. Another thing I noticed was that the game had a status listed. This was invariably the player’s Altera username, but now it listed the name “Crystal.”
…
Before departing from the cabin, I took care to put that purple carapace armor back on myself. Armor like this one was something I hadn’t really seen before, in any game. Looking back into the menu, it had some rather odd features. The armor wasn’t discardable, meaning that it would always occupy either my armor slots or my inventory slots, never being sellable or giftable. It’s design was rather unique too. As expected, the thing covered most of my body— the cuirass protected my torso, gauntlets protected my hands, and graves secured my legs. But there were notable gaps in the armor, mainly around my joints, far larger than gaps in regular armor. These were covered up with some sort of sheeted chainmail. A note in the item’s description informed me that these gaps were meant for mobility, so I could be as quick and agile as possible. Underneath the armor was a plain tank top and purple pants that matched the carapace. These could actually be changed later, so I had some degree of control over my clothing, at least.
But that really was it though. A set of armor that was a permanent item for my character class, which I found out had been set to "Rogue". No weapons, no potions, not even a scrap of money. Games like these were really ones where you just had to scrounge up what you could find. Perhaps there’d be something worth using as a weapon around? There was.
A few feet away from my cabin was an old knife firmly lodged into the base of a tree trunk. It came off after a good pull. Far from a good weapon, pulling up my inventory screen revealed a pretty sorry description. The thing was battered and was more dull than a bread knife. Apparently pummeling enemies with my fists would’ve done more damage on average than the weapon. It was worth taking anyway, if only to use as a tool.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I scanned the surrounding countryside for a road. When that yielded nothing, I willed the in-game map to pop up for me. Nothing. It was one of those game maps that only filled in as you went to those places. Fun for exploring, sure. Less so when you’re in the middle of Nowheresville. My quest log was empty, too, save for a small quest with a “?” In the center.
More worrying, I noticed that my status read “Vulnerable.” Focusing on it gave me more detail.
“Quest Log Updated!” the messages popped up in front of me. After it faded, something about my map changed. Instead of a previously barren map that only surrounded the area, an updated map presented me with an arrow pointing East. Nothing else had changed. Was this the first quest in the game? To travel to a town? It still just showed a question mark with a blank description.
Frankly, the quest might well be leading me into the final boss fight with me woefully unprepared. No other leads were around, so nothing else could really be done. I gave the forest ahead of me a quick glance and headed in the direction of the rising sun.
As I got closer, the arrow grew bigger and changed in direction, slowly edging to the northeast. I’d been walking for at least an hour, according to the in-game clock. Something was bound to pop up soon. Almost like a slap to the face, a small town immediately appeared before me in a valley that couldn’t have been more than a mile away. I sprinted down towards the town immediately— at a speed and pace far superior to anything I’d ever accomplished in the past: only about five minutes. My own record, back when I was 19, was about nine minutes. And this body just cut that time in half.
Neural VR had always put you as you were into their worlds. Like I iterated before, that had been an immense drawback that pushed people away. Going into a game and letting you be whatever you wanted had always been a draw for gamers since digital games had been around. Heck, that had been a draw before digital games: Dungeons and Dragons was popular for the same reason.
But now that people could have different bodies, different experiences altogether in VR. Well, that was certainly going to be bringing tons of people to the Alpha. I can sort of see why they’d never introduced it until now—real-life sensations could interfere with the sensations in the game, creating cognitive dissonance even with your own body. With that limiter removed, who knows what was possible now?
Honestly though, was my case actually repeated with other players? The game was going to give us a surprise in the form of “slightly differentiated character models.” This? This was not that. I began to wonder how visceral the reactions of other people may have been. No one would’ve expected this, considering what other experiences we’ve had in VR. Waking up in a woman’s body was jarring to say the least, but I honestly hadn’t minded it as much as I could have. Putting a person in an entirely different body without prior consent would be pretty contentious.
Something wasn’t adding up. There had been press releases that showed character models only slightly differing from people’s actual appearances. Straight up putting people into entirely different bodies on the actual release made no sense. It wouldn’t generate as much popularity as if they’d announced it pre-release, especially considering that anyone who’d be experiencing this already owns the game and the Alpha.
I pulled up the in-game web browser, a slightly translucent floating screen like my inventory and map. Surely someone would’ve mentioned this whole stint online if anyone else encountered it.
The browser didn’t work. Actually, a good portion of the menu’s UI wasn’t functioning. Forums, in-game messaging, and even customer support was grayed out. When I tried to pull them up with just my mind, I got an alert that appeared which simply said “Unavailable.”
What about logging out? The game was supposedly functioning on the logout features of previous games. You just had to stay in one spot and select logout for twenty seconds without moving from your spot. It was to prevent players from just leaving in the middle of combat.
That function was grayed out too. I’d need to force log out. Doing that would leave my character frozen for about a minute and leave me vulnerable to attack.
But I was past the point of caring about that. Nothing was making sense; I had to get out here. Suddenly, I felt a huge lurch in my stomach. The forest around me began to blur and the dizziness that I had felt earlier came back in full force. If it was possible, I would have likely thrown up. A red bar began flashing in front of my vision.
DO NOT FORCE LOG! Attempting to do so could cause a fatal accident!
Another message popped up on the lower right side of my vision and maximized itself over the red warning.
A major incident is currently occurring with ALL users implanted with an Altera 1.0 neural link. Attempting to sever the connection with the link equipped will likely cause a potentially fatal incident. All players capable of being removed from Delsana have been removed. As a necessary precaution, regular logging has been disabled for anyone currently in Delsana. For everyone currently in the game, repeat: DO NOT FORCE LOG.
It was hard to read at first, the woozy feeling was so bad. What was I looking at? Fatal accident? Clearing my head, I focused on the report again. The message continued.
An unpredicted interaction with Altera 1.0 neural links has arisen within Delsana. A hostile entity is currently attempting to breach Delsana security measures. To prevent further corruption by outside interactions, the game will temporarily reside in an intranet. Communication outside the game will be offline until further notice. Please wait patiently while further alerts are pending. Repeat: DO NOT FORCE LOG.
There was no way in hell that this was real. Some jokester must’ve gotten into the game to freak people out. Maybe they managed to post a false alert by spoofing admin credentials. Getting stuck in VR, like some kind of weird anime, that would’ve never happened. Heck, those stories just increased paranoia about the devices. Every possible security system had been put onto Altera products since they became widely available. Force logging had been a feature since the first neural links were still being tested. Why would doing so now suddenly be deadly? How could a hacker possibly make it deadly? Why would a hacker do any of this?
My mind was still hazy, and the beeping alert was starting to drive me up the wall. Almost as soon as I had thought that, the flashing red bar disappeared, but the combat log on the lower right side of my vision had been replaced with a singular static phrase: Do Not Force Log.
I tried to pull up some other menu functions. All were still dead, just like the message claimed. But the game functions like inventory and character skills were still working just fine. Everything was getting to be too much for me to handle. This had to be some twisted guy somewhere getting his sick kicks. Staying here and being a witness to this loon was just going to make me crazy.
Ignoring the alert, I began trying to force log when a grim realization struck my mind. Second thoughts about the message started running through my head.
It was frighteningly specific, only mentioning people with first generation Altera neural links. If some morbid hacker had actually sent this message to frighten people, it wouldn’t make any sense to be so specific. People without the Altera 1.0 weren’t being targeted by the message. The 1.0 couldn’t have been used by anything larger than a tiny fraction of the playerbase. No point in scaring a group that couldn’t have been any more than a twentieth of the player count.
And out of all Altera devices to have problems, the very first commercially available one was most susceptible. Much of the modern security used in neural links hadn’t been implemented until later devices. Some measure of this was definitely beginning to look more and more real. Even still, the idea that someone could die in VR seemed unfathomable—no issues apart from the Tokyo Paraplegic accident had ever been known. 5 whole years of immersion gear being well known to be a safe product and that was suddenly getting thrown out the window?
No more messages were coming in, just the static message that blocked out the combat log. Selecting it only reopened the initial alert that tried to explain everything. The alert just reiterated itself constantly. My head began to hurt from all of the crap I was trying to process.
Was this somehow related to the player character remodelings? The message made no mention of anything happening to people’s character models. But considering how strange everything was becoming, it was hard to believe that there wasn’t some sort of connection.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the best idea to combat log now. I was still hesitant to believe the message, and a good part of me was still thinking that it was all a load of garbage made by an elaborate prankster. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to risk doing what the message was telling me could be fatal. And I don’t suppose there was much point in worrying. The system should automatically boot me out after 12 hours anyways, once it detected that my blood sugar was too low.
Someone had to be around town. If this whole thing wasn’t a prank, I should be able to tell by whether or not I was able to find someone without an Altera 1.0. I’d also be able to find out if everyone else’s character models had been changed as drastically as mine. At any rate, there’d be someone who was at least in the same boat as me, even if they didn’t have answers either.
The town, named Grish on the minimap, was far more empty than it looked. As soon as I entered, the “?” In my quest log disappeared. Enormous residences and streets full of various stores betrayed how lifeless the town actually was. Not a single person, NPC or player, was wandering the streets. Some of the doors were locked while others weren’t. It was like the people who had been here had suddenly just vanished.
Stores had money and goods strewn out on the counter. Multiple homes were full of half empty plates and cups; some had water taps still running and stoves simmering. Oddly enough, the water seemed as if it were suspended in midair, no flow at all, and the fire seemed suspended too— no crackling or anything. The town was seemingly stuck in time, with residents that just straight up disappeared.
The town square fared no better, its unpopulated wide cobble streets and enormous park only made the entire place seem even emptier. Sitting down next to a tree in the middle of the park, I tried to get my bearings.
The red message was still residing in the lower left side of my vision. Trying to get rid of it didn’t work. The thing was permanently affixed to my vision.
I looked back into my menu to see if anything had changed. Everything was still gray. My status still marked me as Crystal, but my status bar now read “Safe” instead of “Vulnerable,” presumably since I was now in a town instead of the wild. Other players attacking was no longer a concern. I’d be safe around other players.
As if on cue, a tall, buff man had turned the corner, just to my left.
“Oh thank God!” the man yelled. “Finally, I managed to find someone. I’ve been looking forever!” He looked manic, but tired. Well cut, short brown hair and a cleanly shaved face betrayed his otherwise frenzied appearance. Darting forward, the man’s blue eyes focused on me.
He ran right up to me and, without warning, gave me a big fat hug.
“Umm, nice to meet you too,” I managed to say, his bear hug making it hard to breathe.
“Sorry,” the stranger said, stepping back. “I just haven’t seen anyone for hours. I’m really relieved to see someone else. Have you gotten that weird message too?”
“Yeah, I have. Do you have any idea what it’s about? It’s gotta be some kind of a joke, right? Some kind of morbid prank by a hacker?”
The man suddenly paled. “You mean, you don’t know either? But…”
He shifted then and stared then, as if he was really uncomfortable. Tugging at his shirt, the stranger tried to adjust his clothing. Odder were the mannerisms the man had. He held himself up in a really odd way, like he was trying to carry a few extra pounds.
I suddenly realized what was so strange about the man.
“Wait! It happened to you too didn’t it? Your body! It’s not actually your real one, is it?
The stranger looked straight at me. “You mean your body changed too? I thought that it might’ve been just me. Like some sort of weird glitch.”
I nodded earnestly. “It’s so strange! I was a guy before all of this. I didn’t even think that they had the technology for something like what happened to us!
“Then we’re in the same boat,” she said, slumping. “I used to be a woman.”
As it was, that seemed hard to believe. He, now she, was incredibly tall from where I stood, maybe a foot more than myself. Her stubbled face and muscled arms didn’t exactly help much either.
“It’s so weird having so much of my body like this. I’m so big and tall,” she said, quivering. “I feel like I’m walking on stilts all the time. Not to mention all of the other changes to my body.”
“Do you really not know anything?” the strange lady asked once more, the panic setting again in her eyes.
I shook my head. I really wished that I did know, but I was just as clueless on her as to what happened to us.
“Oh jeez, oh jeez,” she murmured, biting her thumb. “What am I going to do?”
The woman walked off the other direction, before turning around and walking back to me. She kept pacing, her right thumb still locked between her teeth.
Her breathing began to come out short and raggedy with her eyes even worse than they had been earlier. They were darting around now, going from myself, to the buildings around us, to the ground, and then back to me.
“Hey, hey,” I stumbled forward, grabbing her arm. “Calm down. You’re stressing yourself out too much.”
She pushed herself off of me. Which didn’t take much, given my new much smaller size. Again the strange woman started to pace. This time, she bit down so hard on her thumb that I could actually see blood.
That was it. The Alpha didn’t actually translate most pains, but the fact that her thumb injury didn’t hurt didn’t matter right now. It was clear to me that she was about to go into full-blown panic mode if she was allowed to keep going on like this.
“Lady!” I yelled, grabbing her by the arm. “Calm down! You’re not getting anywhere worrying like this.”
She tried to push me off once more with her superior strength, but this time I held onto her arm like a kid grabbing their parent’s leg.
It looked ridiculous. I’d wrapped both of my arms around her absolutely beefy one. She was so tall that I nearly had to stand on my toes to do it. If she lifted her arm a little, I’d have gone straight off the ground.
The woman at least stopped breathing so raggedly. Looking down at me, her face scrunched into an unsure frown.
“Would you let go of me?” she said.
“Not until you stop going all crazy. Panicking is just gonna make it hard for you to think straight.”
“Why the hell do you care so much about me? I’m just some stranger to you.”
“Because you’re gonna go insane like this, and right now, the two of us are all we’ve got.”
That seemed to at least calm her down a little more. She lowered her arm, gesturing for me to get out of my ridiculous grip and back onto the ground.
“Come on,” she said. “Get.”
“Not until you promise to stop acting like the world is about to end,” I stated stubbornly in response.
“Fine, I promise.” More exasperated than panicky at this point, the woman-turned-man set me down on the ground, and I quickly hopped off.
She was still markedly annoyed. “You didn’t have to grab my arm like that though.”
“You were the one that hugged me first,” I retorted.
“I was out of my mind then,” the woman said back, shoving her hands into her face. “Still am, actually. How is all of this happening? Why are our bodies like this? What’s this hostile entity crap about?”
I could tell she was getting panicky again. Right away, I held out my fingers in front of her face and snapped them loudly.
“Hey, hey, focus. You’re gonna go crazy if you keep brooding. Let’s head over to those benches by the town square and talk about what happened, capiche?”
She nodded, and two of us both sat on our own bench, facing each other with a table in between us.
“Okay, first off, let’s start with names,” I said.
“Sure,” the woman responded, her demeanor finally down to non-panic mode levels. Though her voice was still a bit shaky. “Real names? Or In-game names?”
“In-game, of course.” Weird question. No one in games ever called each other by their real name if they just met.
The woman bristled. “Well, I didn’t really pick mine. I just got dropped into the game with this body and name already assigned to me.”
“Wait,” I held up my hand. “Do you by chance know who you became?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I turned into this,” I gestured to my body, “ I realized that it was a character that I made in another video game a long while ago. Did anything similar happen to you when you realized what your body looked like?”
Right away the woman turned a deep shade of red. “Um, yeah! The same thing happened to me. This body is a character model I created a while ago too!”
I raised an eyebrow. “We’re not gonna get anywhere if we don’t tell each other what really happened. We’re in this together, you know?”
The woman flinched. “Fine, I’ll tell you. Don’t laugh, promise?”
I promised.
“My character is an old imaginary boyfriend I had when I was fourteen.”
“Mmf,” I sputtered out, biting my tongue to keep from laughing. That was unexpected.
“Hey!” she shouted, “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”
Her face was an even deeper shade of crimson now.
“I’m not!” I defended myself. “I bit my tongue!”
“You were still about to!” she insisted.
I shrugged. “Look, let’s just get back to the topic at hand. What do you mean your character is your ‘imaginary boyfriend?’”
“I mean what I said,” she told me. “My character looks exactly like how I imagined my boyfriend would look. Tall, burly, and handsome. And the character name is exactly what I used to call him: Jess.”
I rubbed my forehead, thinking. My fingers came up to meet a mess of black hair, and I brushed my newly lengthened bangs out of my eyes.
“So, you’re someone who you imagined as your boyfriend and I’m someone I made in a character creator years ago.”
She nodded. “Sounds about right to me.”
“But why?” I questioned. “Why were we put into these bodies? How did that happen?”
“Jeez, man, I don’t know. I already told you I’m as clueless as you are.” The woman told me, her face getting slightly irritated. “Look, why don’t you tell me your name?”
“Well, the girl I made,” I gestured to myself, “is named Crystal. You can call me that too. What should I call you? Jess? Or something else?”
The woman seemed to mull it over for a second before nodding.
“Yeah, you can call me Jess. Better than my real name,” she said mysteriously.
I didn’t bother asking what the deal with her real name was.
“Let’s forget about our bodies right now,” she continued. “We can talk in circles about how and why the devs did this to us. The real pressing problem is why the game is suddenly telling us that we can’t log out at risk of… dying.”
I glared at the pulsating message in the bottom right of my vision. I still wanted to talk about how our bodies had changed so drastically. It’d be like someone telling you that teleportation was a real technology only to immediately forget about it. But she was right. Being stuck in these bodies was only an issue so long as we weren’t able to log out.
“You think someone wanted this?” Jess suddenly exclaimed, eyes growing wide. “To trap us in a video game, just like in Sword Art Online or some other anime. It’d explain why they plopped us in these bodies”
I scowled and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you hearing yourself? That’s ridiculous. Some idiot probably managed to hack into Altera’s servers and is just giving us the scare of our life.”
Truth be told, it was more like I was trying to convince myself than her. Disabling the logout shouldn’t even have been possible, and yet here it was. If something that should’ve been impossible actually occurred, who knows what else could happen.
Still, even if I doubted myself, Jess was still here two steps away from a full-blown panic attack. I wasn’t just going to stress her out for no reason.
The panic on Jess’ face shrank a little bit, but her brow was still furrowed. “Then you think it’s actually safe to force log out?”
I held up my hands. “Well, we should still be careful. I’m just saying that the chances of this really being so bad as it looks is pretty low. Chances are, all of this’ll blow over in a few hours, tops.”
“Then, what’ll we do in the meantime?” the anxious woman asked.
I racked my brain. “Well, have you noticed how all of the NPCs are gone?”
“Yeah, I have. I figured that whatever caused all of this must’ve also caused every NPC to vanish.”
I thought the same. “And if every NPC is gone, what do you think that means?”
Jess frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Try to guess.” I pointed to the buildings around us.
She looked around, straining to notice if anything seemed off kilter. Eventually, her shoulders slumped.
“Okay, I give. The heck are you hinting at?”
“The stores!” I revealed. “They’re empty. All of them. That means we can go stock up on some stuff while everyone’s gone! It’s the least the devs owe us after letting us go through this terribad ordeal. We’ll be ahead of the curve compared to everyone else once Altera gets everything back to normal!”
Now it was Jess’ turn to scowl. “What, you mean steal? I’m not doing that.”
“Come on!” I urged. “It’s not like we’re stealing from real people. Besides, it’s a part of the game. Check your skills in the game’s menu, I already know sneaking and lock picking are there. Crime is a part of the game!”
I grabbed her by the arm and started trying to haul her towards a particularly nice looking general store. Unsuccessfully, of course. She was still more than a foot taller than me and probably weighed twice as much.
“But I never steal in video games!” she insisted.
“Yeah?” I asked. “You’ve never had a golden opportunity like this before either, have you? Come on! You’ll regret it if you don’t. Besides, what else do we have to pass the time? It’s not like you can do any quests with all the NPCs gone.”
“Yeah, but—“
I gave her an exasperated look. “But nothing. Nada. Zilch. If you just stand around here, you’ll start thinking too hard again. You can do whatever you want. Stand around, watch me, steal with me, whatever. But no way are you gonna start pacing like a madman again, alright? So, you coming with me?”
She looked down at me with an uncertain look. I shot back with the best smile I could muster.
Finally defeated, Jess gave me a small smile of her own. “I guess I can try it a little. If just to shut you up.”