Outside Booth’s panic attack, the blond man just kept smiling expectantly. He seemed oblivious to the fact that Booth was just standing there like an idiot.

This man is Issac Porter, village baker and a friend of your family.

Useful information, but not helpful in the moment. No tutorial instructions appeared to inform Booth how to move.

You do have legs, though, the ones the game gave you. And a brain to send messages to them. Stop overthinking things and just walk.

Booth took a step forward and then another. As the panic wore off, he heaved the burlap bag forward and set it on the cart. It landed with a heavy thunk and a puff of loose flour.

And that was that. Booth turned to face Issac Porter the baker.

I will never make fun of the movement part of a game tutorial ever again.

Which was painfully true, of course. There wouldn’t be any other games.

Porter’s smile broadened into a truly pleased grin. “Thank you kindly, Booth. I’ll put that flour to good use. Come on over here and collect your payment.”

Porter motioned to a tidy stack of copper coins set out on his table and with his other hand held out a hunk of crusty bread. Booth took another few fledgling steps to get to the table, carefully picked up the coins, and looked down at his belt. A likely-looking bag hung from it, so he slid the coins into it. They clinked as they joined the light-sounding number of coins already there.

The bread warmed Booth’s fingers as he took it, and the aroma made him salivate all over again. Porter watched expectantly as Booth lifted the bread to his mouth and took a bite. It was crusty and fluffy and tasted like it had come from the oven mere moments before.

Booth had been waiting for some kind of dialogue prompt to appear and offer choices about things he could say to Porter. Conversations drifted all around him, and Porter of course had spoken to him. But it felt very much like he was being walked through a dance that didn’t require him to say anything, so he hadn’t.

Now, he blurted out, “This is amazing.”

Or he tried to, anyhow. The words rose in his mind and tried to flow past the bread he was chewing and through his lips. But the sound that emerged was a more wordless, “Mmm.”

There were some restrictions on the tutorial, then. He shoved another bite of bread into his mouth and cared very little that he couldn’t just say whatever he wanted to, for the moment anyhow. He’d known the sensory aspects of the game would be better than previous technology had been able to provide, but Ugly Star and Neuroconnect had officially outstripped all of Booth’s expectations.

Despite the somewhat limited options of the character creation screen, the human models and animations which surrounded him were top notch, too. Porter, aside from not noticing some of Booth’s oddity in behavior, looked completely real. So did everyone else strolling around the green. Even the children looked like real children and not some freakish shrunken version of an adult.

Everyone seemed real. Everything looked and sounded and smelled and tasted real. Booth, inside his avatar, even felt real. That super realistic VR people had been wanting for decades? Ugly Star and Neuroconnect and their Total Immersion Reality had nailed it.

Booth took a deep breath of fresh air laced with a scent like sunshine and growing fields and baking bread and let some of the tension drain from his shoulders.

A harsh, jarring clanging raked through the air, ear-shattering and repetitive. Booth was reminded of the cowbells overeager football fans sometimes rang from the stands, only this was dozens of times deeper and louder.

Porter’s smile vanished. His face drew into one of intense ferocity, and he leaped into action. Abandoning his baker’s stand, he dragged a surprisingly large and previously unnoticed sword from the back of his cart. He clapped one big hand onto Booth’s shoulder and shoved Booth toward the nearby stable.

“Get down, and get out of sight. Find a weapon if you can, but don’t do anything stupid.”

And then Porter ran off, through the green toward where a number of other villagers had suddenly drawn weapons and were gathering. A handful of them carried bronze bucklers and wore golden yellow sashes, as well, but everyone carrying a weapon looked like they’d run this drill before and meant business. Booth remembered something from his Origin about Traton being raided often and the people being tough and stubborn. Something like that.

Now didn’t seem like a time to figure out how to open any kind of character sheet or journal and double check his memory. Left to his own devices, he’d probably have just run toward the stable Porter had indicated. But Porter had specifically said to get down. Both dropped into a crouch and crept behind the cart.

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As soon as Booth crouched, a soft clattering sound filled his mind—dice rolling, he understood. A message drifted into his view.

[You rolled a 14 for Stealth.]

Booth wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. If he had to guess, it probably meant it was a check to see if something could detect him.

For a tutorial, it sure doesn’t hold your hand.

The back of Booth’s neck crawled with the sensation that he was being watched. Staying low, he darted the short open distance between the cart and the stable without standing. Instead of going inside, he stumbled around the corner and behind the building.

The stink as he rounded the corner was thick, but Booth had been working with livestock since he could walk. The stench of animal shit barely registered—this was a stable, after all. He crouched beside a manure pile, back pressed to the wall, and tried to think through what to do next.

Shouts and screams and the clatter of weapon against weapon rose on the far side of the stable. Booth’s heart pounded painfully in his chest.

This is the combat part of the tutorial.

He fought the instinctive adrenaline sensation pumping through his avatar and grabbed hold of every experience he’d ever had in a game. He had no armor or weapon. The first step would be to find something he could equip. That’s what this part was about.

Find a weapon if you can.

He looked around. A conveniently-discarded sword and shield, maybe? Maybe he’d need to go into the stable and look there, since that was where the baker had pointed him.

The whisper of a die rolling filled his head. Booth recalled his earlier Stealth roll and froze.

[You rolled a 17 for Awareness.]

At the far end of the stable, movement caught Booth’s eye. A lone figure came slinking around the back of the house nearest the stable. Booth glimpsed human features and a skinny build. Something dark smeared the face like war paint, and the person wore tattered-looking clothing of a very loose weave.

His inner narrator filled in the blanks for him.

The mud markings and reed-woven clothing of this man identifies him as a Meres-folk Raider. These raiders regularly cross the Mindet River into Southland territories, attacking villages and stealing foodstuffs and livestock before retreating.

Given that the raider moved toward the stable, Booth assumed he was after the horses. But Booth hadn’t found a weapon yet, and the figure seemed unaware of Booth’s presence. While Booth was weighing his options, the raider reached the stable but didn’t go inside. Instead, he rounded the corner and moved out of sight.

So not the horses, maybe?

Light glimmered briefly on the tines of a pitchfork leaned beside the manure pile. Booth didn’t miss the hint. As his hand closed around the rough wooden handle, his personal narrator spoke up once more.

As you take up your makeshift weapon, you are well aware that your parents and younger brother are also in town for market day. You are not a trained fighter like the militia which now defends Traton from the raiders. Will your concern for your family prompt you to defend your home anyhow?

A sick feeling wrapped around Booth’s throat. Everything that had happened to Booth in the days and hours leading up to entering the game crashed into him. A familiar feeling of red crept around the edges of his vision.

Motherfuckers. Why would you do that to me?

Neuroconnect mapped his mind, and the game’s system used the data to create a custom experience for him. Maybe there was no way the game’s creators could’ve realized it might pick up data the player would prefer they not use, but in the moment, Booth wasn’t thinking logically enough to care what the hell they could have realized. Anger and a sharp sense of betrayal stabbed at him.

Just on the other side of the stable, a chorus of children’s voices shrieked. There was no sense of play in the sound, now.

That was the direction the lone raider had gone.

Among the young voices now yelping and wailing for help, Booth swore he heard Toby’s. He knew it couldn’t really be Toby—for one thing, if Booth was fifteen in this scenario, then Toby would be a mere toddler.

Plus, Toby’s not here. Toby’s already dead.

This little brother belonged to the character Booth Greenfield, not to the real person Booth Green. He wasn’t real. None of this was real.

But it was real enough. Maybe Booth couldn’t help his Toby, but somebody’s kids were in danger and helpless to defend themselves.

All Booth’s own helplessness coalesced into a burning knot in his gut. Kids were screaming, and he was hiding behind a pile of horse shit, doing nothing. The knot in his stomach burst, boiling anger through his veins. He shoved himself to his feet and ran, following the path the lone raider had taken.

Booth spotted the kids right away. They’d huddled between the baker’s table and a stand with an array of summer vegetables. They cowered all together, and Booth couldn’t tell if they included some version of Toby or not. He didn’t have time to look very hard.

The raider Booth had watched sneaking past the stable whirled to confront Booth. Up close, he was more intimidating than Booth had initially thought. The face beneath the mud was fierce. Hard eyes of a startling green fixed on Booth. In one hand, he held a crudely-made spear, currently pointed loosely down toward the pack of children.

A by-now familiar clatter of dice sounded. This time, Booth felt an accompanying sense of disconnect, as if his mind were disengaging from his body—not entirely, though, because he still felt the pitchfork clutched in both hands. The taste of bread lingered on his tongue.

[You rolled a 16 for Initiative.]

At the bottom right corner of Booth’s vision, a partially transparent square appeared. After a second, he recognized it was an overhead view mini-map marked with a grid. In a row across the bottom center of his vision, indicators appeared which informed him that he would have a Main Action, a Secondary Action, and Movement available for his turn.

Booth barely glanced at any of the information. He already knew what he wanted to do.

I’m going to hit this son of a bitch, just as hard as I can.

He tried to do just that, but he couldn’t move. His muscles twitched. His pitchfork ticked in slow motion increments toward the raider as if signaling his intention. He glared at the turn indicators at the bottom of his vision and realized they were grayed out.

Turn-based bullshit!

Booth hung for a split second in a weird sort of suspended animation while the game apparently calculated whether Booth or the raider would act first. Then the square on the mini-map which Booth estimated belonged to him turned a bright blue. The turn indicators flared brightly. The invisible force holding Booth at bay released him.

Booth lunged, half blind with fury and driving the pitchfork before him with all his strength.