Raziel proved a quick study when it came to the controls. She had her character up and going in minutes, mastered the mechanics, and for her part she chose a half demon. While she was running the character through the starting town, Albaer had to ask.

“Why a demonoid?”

She shrugged, “I thought I should ease into the idea of humans. I don’t know how long we’ll be here… or…” She glanced up at him, “if we can even survive here.”

It was dark, but the light of the television screen was good enough to show her face. “Right… different biology. You might not be able to eat our food, drink our water, or who knows, even breathe our air in the long term.” Albaer acknowledged and she looked at him with new respect, leaning her head back a bit.

“So, you’re smart, huh?” She asked.

“I guess.” Albaer shrugged. “I get good marks in school at least.”

She recentered her focus on the game and noticed that the townspeople weren’t very friendly with her. “Go away, demonspawn.” Was played in a number of voices.

She frowned at that, like they were talking to her and not her character. “Why won’t they talk to me?” She asked Albaer with a grimace. “It’s a lot harder to get started if they’re going to make me an outcast.”

“That’s part of the game story, if you start as one of those races,” he pointed to the humans and elves on the screen that walked by with pretty good pathing to get to their job sites, “they’ll be more friendly. As you drift farther and farther away from looking like them, they’ll like you less and less at the start. Demonoids, half demons, are shunned in this fictional world. It’s hard to win people over, you have to do more repeat quests, you’re punished more severely for crimes that as a human you might only get a warning for, and others are quicker to attack you.”

“Oh. They’re bad.” Raziel made the judgement without hesitation.

“In the story, they fought a long war against demons, and other races too, so they developed an automatic hatred for any member of their old enemies’ races.” Albaer explained as she finally found somebody willing to give her a quest.

“That’s not better.” She pointed out, and Albaer shrugged it off.

“Maybe not, but it’s just a game.” He replied to her and she set off on her quest.

“So… no magic, how does this thing work? That’s not a window, so what is it, how does it do all this stuff that it’s doing?” She asked him with a hint of underlying zeal.

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“I promise you, I’ve got no idea.” Albaer chuckled and lay backwards on the bed.

“What?” Raziel demanded and paused the game, she got up and leaned over him, hands on her hips, ample bosom hovering over his face, she raised a brow at him and then narrowed her eyes.

He flicked a glance at her outline dimly illuminated by the screen and then focused on her bright red eyes, “I said, I have no idea. I bought the console and the TV but I have only a vague idea of how it actually does what it does. The game is programmed by hundreds of people, the console built by thousands, and the same goes for the controller, the TV and all the components. Nobody really knows how it’s ‘all’ made.”

“You can’t be serious?” Raziel’s lines of sharp teeth were exposed, she put one red finger on his chest, “Is this your way of keeping some sort of secrets from us…?”

“No, I promise!” Albaer answered with a slightly higher pitch, her finger had a very sharp tip, more like a talon or claw than a finger alone. ‘I wonder how strong they are?’ He had the uncomfortable thought, but turned away from it a moment later.

He relaxed a bit, “Look I don’t mean it’s a total mystery, it’s just that… well there are lots of parts, everybody knows how to do ‘their’ part, whether it be harvesting resources to make them, or putting them together, or writing the code… a set of instructions, or creating different parts, no one person knows it all, but our machines require a lot of complexity, so we specialize to create different parts each and then put it together at the end.”

“Oh… I find that hard to believe.” She replied, but removed her finger.

“If you want I can pick up some books for you, and even some things to play with a bit if you’re really curious.” Albaer said and yawned.

That made her smile, and her smile was beautiful until, as the game went to power save, it panned to a firelight view that flickered just right as she showed her teeth. “Thank you, Albaer.”

He shuddered at the winged demon looming over him. “No problem.” He replied, but privately wondered, not for the first time, ‘What have I gotten myself into.’

‘Did I say something wrong?’ She wondered, but brushed it off. “I’m going to keep playing, if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, yeah sure, go ahead, I need to sleep now though.” Albaer answered and pulled the blanket over his head.

The volume of the screen went down to a barely audible level and the demoness kept at the game long into the night, far beyond the point at which he finally managed to go to sleep.

He woke up to see Raziel still at the console and her character now in vastly improved armor, charging toward a dragon while a group of NPCs followed after her. Tellingly, her NPC followers were a mix of races, a feat only achievable by doing lots of ‘Good Will’ quests.

“You had fun.” Albaer said inching his way down the length of his bed to avoid her and then hopped off.

He made barely more than a gentle thud when he landed on the carpet.

“Yeah, yeah fun, yeah.” Raziel was staring at the screen and cackling as she swung her axe into the dragon’s face. “Take that you scaly bastard!”

“Somebody is really into it, what’d you do, suck out a gamer’s soul on the way here?” Albaer said with a half joke as he walked away and into the bathroom. He didn’t hear her respond, or really anything from behind the closed door and turned on the water, the roar of the shower beat down, and in that quiet private space he was able to relax, strip, and step into the steam to get ready to start the day.

Albaer washed his hair and body, and tried to prepare himself. “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay… it won’t be that bad. It won’t be. It’s just another day…” The lies poured past his lips on a loop, and were only interrupted when he heard Lialah shout…

“He asked what?!”