Before me stood a young woman, blonde, maybe in her mid-20s, dressed in the same odd grey starter clothes I had on. She took in the sights without missing a beat, locked on to me, and began walking over. As she got closer I could see that she was nearly as tall as I am, maybe an inch or two short of my six feet. She had a generous bust and wide hips, the sort of figure rarely seen outside celebrities, models, and others who could afford cosmetic modifications. I did my best to direct my attention elsewhere.

"Hey," I called out, careful to keep my eyes on hers, "I'm Will, Senior Forensic Tester," extending my hand. She stopped about five feet from me, glanced down at my hand, and arched a single eyebrow. Damn, I had always been jealous of people that could do that.

"You are American, then? I am Lindsey Auclair. We don’t shake hands, where I am from." she said. There was an imperious cast to her posture, which was starting to make me nervous.

"Nice to meet you. I've, uh, never met an aristocrat before."

She smiled, but it was all teeth and didn't reach her eyes. She could have given a shark a run for its money.

"So all Europeans are aristocracy now?"

"No! No, sorry. I didn't mean that. It's just that I’ve never seen someone with your, uh, I mean I haven't, uh..." I stumbled over myself. Her words had cut right through my composure, somehow. Her laugh rang out, and I could see the mirth in her eyes this time.

"I am sorry, I should not be so unkind. Your guess was correct Mr. Senior Forensic Tester."

I cringed internally at my nervous rambling, but this woman before me was on the level of Executives. In normal life, people like that have no cause to even look at people like me. I'm a number on a spreadsheet.

"No problem. I, uh, should probably get to work. No rest for the wicked, and all that." I edged back towards the roof access door.

"The wicked?" She asked.

"It's an expression. Line from a song from a classic game, like fifty years ago, I think," I responded somewhat nervously, still hoping to escape this social interaction before something terrible happened to me.

"I would not know. I don't play games." she shot back.

"Why, then are you playing this one?" I asked reflexively, my curiosity momentarily overriding my survival instincts. Why would the Europeans be giving out a key to someone not interested in games? Especially when they supposedly only had access to a single key stone. DA had reported that they had secured both that landed in the Americas, and I had heard that the Chinese had secured two as well.

"What do you mean?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. After a moment she seemed to realize what I was asking and continued, "Well, it is the message we all received from our neighbors, before we received the stones. They said that this is an important cultural institution to them, so I am here to learn why that is in order to be better prepared to relate to them. Shall we go then?" she motioned to the door I had been slowly edging towards.

"We?" I asked, with a sinking feeling.

"We. You are a tester of games, and so you will be trying to understand this place in detail. I also wish to learn more about this place, in order to meet my family's expectations. Also we seem to be alone but for each other, it is likely that we are meant to explore together." She hit her points in a rapid and clear cadence.

"I'm sorry, I really don't know how to carry myself around someone in your position. Honestly, I don’t really even know how your political system works over there. I'd rather not embarrass myself more than I already have." I admitted. Might as well just be direct before this got out of hand. I had to say though, it was slightly concerning that we were the only ones around. Supposedly everyone was going to be starting at the same time.

She laughed again and said, "No, no, I certainly won't hold you to our rules of etiquette. You have a different culture from mine and I will respect that. I am in need of help here, though. You would not leave a lady to wander alone, would you?"

"No, I suppose I wouldn't. Let's get moving. What powers did you pick, by the way?" I asked.

"I chose the third option, to have my power conform to me."

"Huh, me too. Maybe everyone else is still picking or designing powers."

I turned, pushing at the bar across the roof access door, and it swung inward. The interior was dimly lit in pink. As I stepped inside, I could see the small concrete landing with a staircase leading down. The door swung shut behind the woman who had decided to accompany me. There was a pink crystal hovering in the center, identical to the one I got my key from. I reached out to touch it, and was greeted with a message when my hand got close, this one resolving to become readable much more quickly than any before it.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

[You are already bound to location: Earth-Human-Home-11]

Finally something I can work with. We get our own starting racial area, and there are multiple instances. There didn't seem to be anything to do here, so I started down the stairs.

"Do your augs work here?" I asked as we made our way down the stairwell.

"No, I have had no access since I arrived."

"Hm. Maybe this is a competitive game, if they’re so fixated on cutting off outside resources and forcing us to use only what we find inside this game. We may regret choosing to start with less power."

We reached the next landing, and I pushed open the door rather than continuing down the stairs. The door swung closed behind us, and we found ourselves in an expansive and well lit open-plan office that looked to be right out of the 1980s. Or maybe the 2000s? I don't know, I'm not a historian. I didn't see any computers anywhere, except a strange one which looked like a mechanical keyboard with no obvious screen. Weird.

The office we were in was about a hundred feet across, and maybe half as deep. There were a few doors on the far side, possibly leading into individual offices. The walls to our left and right had windows at evenly spaced intervals. Not windows which occupied the entire wall, as I was used to seeing in offices, but which instead only occupied a small portion of the wall. Several were open, and there was a steady breeze blowing through the space. The walls were white with strange, smeared posters at seemingly random spots, the carpet under my feet was an ugly shade of brown, though pleasantly springy. The ceiling was made of the familiar sort of ceiling tiles, with lights spaced evenly over the workspace. Something was off about the lighting elements though, the light they emitted seemed strangely pale and unhealthy looking compared to the LED lighting I was used to, and some of them flickered in a disconcerting way. There were desks at regular intervals, all facing the back of the floor, each with seemingly the exact same set of old-timey office supplies, with a small handful of exceptions which deviated in some way or another. Each had an office chair in front of it, black plastic with black cushions. The plastic of the chairs was rough in a sort of uncanny way. It was as if someone had carved a block of raw plastic into shape, rather than being molded at a factory. Creepy.

I walked over to the desk next to the one which had the keyboard thing, and raided the drawers for something to write with. I found a pen and a stack of papers, blank but for some arbitrary lines and boxes, and sat down in the swivel chair. I tried to shift to find a comfortable position and, failing to do so, started taking notes on what I had figured out so far. I made a quick list of the character generation options I had seen, the starting area, the limited UI, and how augmentations seemed to be disabled.

I finished my list of observations and looked around for Lindsey. She was rummaging through desks, which was fine. I stood up and looked around to see what else I could figure out from here. There didn't seem to be any useful containers to scavenge here, and our starting grey clothing had no pockets, so did we have access to some sort of inventory?

I took my page of notes in my hand and focused. At first, nothing was happening, but as I looked inward trying to make something happen, I noticed a sort of space inside myself. I tried to move my notes into that space and felt a faint resistance. A gentle push, and my notes were gone. The page had appeared in the inner space, and I could vaguely feel the presence - clear enough to identify what it was, but not enough that I could read the words on the page.

Well, that settled that. I pulled the paper out using the same process, and added a note that there was an inventory function. Next I tested how much I could store. A stack of paper vanished with a little more effort than the single page, but not as much more as I had been expecting. Next I went over to the desk that had the mechanical keyboard and took that too, which took yet more effort. I was starting to feel winded, in a way I couldn't fully articulate, so I must be exhausting some sort of resource to access my inventory. I stored the pen and my notes, and considered hunting around for anything useful. Thinking better of it, I made my way over to Lindsey, who had already been doing that and could probably tell me if there was anything beyond office supplies to be had here.

"Anything good?" I called out as I walked over to the desk she had claimed for herself, "I found a weird keyboard, but it’s in my inventory and I think I'm close to my limit for storing or pulling stuff from it, so I'll have to show you later."

"Inventory?" She asked.

"An imaginary space to store things. Games would suck if you had to realistically carry everything."

"Oh, well. You will have to show me. I found that most of the desks are identical, with some old world office supplies. In the few which were different, I found a mechanical wristwatch and some candy bars with smeared logos. I hope that eating, like carrying things, is done away with. We may be in trouble otherwise."

"We'll have to keep an eye out. Some games do make eating mandatory. Anyway, to get at your inventory, look for a space inside yourself, and then focus on sending an object there. Start with something small, it seems to be more difficult based on size or complexity or something."

She took a piece of paper and stared at it for a few seconds. She narrowed her eyes, and turned to me. "Show me."

I took the paper and sent it into my inventory with the others, then brought it back a moment later. She frowned, took the paper and stared at it for a few more seconds.

"I don't know. I can feel something when I look inward, but it does not feel like a space. I'm not sure what it is, but trying to bring something inward feels... wrong, somehow."

"Maybe try bringing that space to the paper instead?" I suggested.

Her eyes flicked to me for a moment, then back to the paper. An instant later, the paper was cut cleanly in half.

"Well, I think that settles what our respective powers are. I guess this game doesn't have an inventory after all. Though your power does make me wonder how accurate the object destruction is. Want to help me smash some stuff?" I asked.

"No, I think I will investigate those closed offices."

I nodded and pulled a desk drawer from the nearest desk as she made her way to the far side of the floor. I dumped it, and smashed it into the desk I had taken it from.