The world slammed into me like a freight train and I winced. It felt like I’d just woken up with a massive hangover and my every sense was weaponized against me. I groaned feebly, and swayed slightly. How was I even standing?
“Easy there friend,” A polite female voice said in concerned tones as gentle hands grabbed my shoulders and steadied me. “Please hold while I recalibrate your senses.” She told me.
Unable to do much else, I waited. Some sort of warmth flowed from those gentle hands and moved across my body, easing the pain and confusion. As the warmth washed up my head, my hearing cleared and my eyes grew focused, and the hangover disappeared. I sighed in relief, “Thanks,” I said, looking around. I was standing in a sunlit gazebo by a calm stream. Grass, shrubs and trees looked to be placed in a carefully planned order and an odd assortment of people dressed in outlandish garbs walked by on neat paths. I was in a park of some sort.
“Don’t worry about them,” the woman said, noticing my attention falling on the people walking near us. She walked around me so I could look at her, she was dressed in a long white shimmering gown and had large fairy wings on her back. “This gazebo is privacy locked, no one can see or hear us, nor can they enter. This whole area is a safe zone anyways.”
I nodded slowly, I had no idea what was going on, but I got that she was trying to help me, I focused my attention on her. She was pretty in a generic sort of way, if I had to describe her, besides pointing out the blond hair, brown eyes and fair skin, I’d say, non threatening. She looked like someone you could relate to and wasn’t striking enough to make anyone feel nervous. “Hi,” I said, questioningly.
“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself,” She said with a chagrined look, “I’m Chyrel, an employee of Infinite Fantasy Game (IFG), a moderator, if you will. It’s my job to help the tiny percent of new players, like yourself, who have experienced some sort of technical difficulties on their first dive. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I am here to help you get back on track.” She said in what sounded like a well rehearsed speech. She smiled encouragingly at me.
“First dive?” I asked, picking out what seemed like the most relevant detail from that boilerplate customer service spiel. I realized, with some concern, that I remembered nothing before opening my eyes a few seconds ago.
“Oh, dear,” Chyrel said with concern, “It sounds like you might have experienced temporary memory loss, that’s a serious but very rare side effect. Don’t worry, I have already started the recovery process. For now, let me explain. Ahem,” She paused to remember her script, “you have entered into the revolutionary award winning virtual reality game known as Infinite Fantasy, it is a self expanding system that works with the latest in artificial intelligence to provide endless content to our users, letting them explore a vibrant ever changing world of fun and adventure. Your body may be sitting in one of our patented Full Dive System Pods (FDSP), but your mind is free to explore this world’s infinite content and limitless possibility. We at IFG guarantee that your body is cared for for the duration of your stay at our facility and that your game experience is unique and fulfilling.” She finished in a gush.
She sounded like a commercial, I thought to myself. “Ok, now that you got all your script done, could you tell me what is actually going on?” I asked, a bit annoyed.
She looked embarrassed. “Sorry about that, every conversation I have is recorded and graded for quality control,” She admitted, “but nevermind all that, look, I’ll break it down.” She looked serious. “The AI sends an alert to us “moderators” to let us know something has gone wrong, I’m here to fix whatever that is. Here’s what I know so far, your character is corrupted, which means you can’t play the game normally, worse, your interface is damaged, which is why you probably felt so bad until I fixed the sensory part. But the memory loss is also tied to interface problems and I’m afraid that might be a little tougher to fix. The system is supposed to read your real world brain and then create an avatar of you here inside the game, with all your memories and personality intact. Your personality seems to be intact, but memories appear to be garbled. I’m running an AI assisted de-scramble on it right now, so hopefully that will be cleared up quickly.”
I shook my head, I wasn’t really understanding everything Chyrel was saying, but I had a simple solution. “If this is all just a game, why not just wake me up, let me go back to my body?” I asked.
Chyrel looked apologetic, “Unfortunately I can’t do that, we can’t let you log out with garbled memories. The FDSP works by downloading your brain into the VR world, letting your simulated self accumulate memories, then uploading everything back into your brain. If we upload the garbled memories into your real brain, that will garble your real brain’s memories. So, unfortunately, until we fix the problem, you can’t safely log out.” explained
“Won’t I die if I’m in here too long?” I asked, concerned, “Like from dehydration or something?” I imagined my real body sitting in a chair slowly withering away as they tried to troubleshoot my game character.
Chyrel shook her head, “Oh don’t worry about that,” she said cheerfully, “here at IFG we work by having FDSP facilities where people like you come in and immerse in safety. We monitor your vitals, feed you with IV’s, we got doctors on staff and everything. Normally we charge you by the hour to be here, of course, but since you are experiencing technical difficulties you will be allowed to stay here free of charge until the problems are resolved, we even contact your employer and explain the situation and make sure you wont get fired, if your stay ends up lasting too long. So relax, you’re getting free time in a game world most people pay hundreds of dollars a real world hour for, why don’t we work on fixing your character while the AI unscrambles your memory files, eh? No need to sit around and be bored when you can get started on your adventure while you wait, right?”
“I guess,” I said doubtfully. “The memory fixing thing happens on its own, you don’t need me to do anything?” I asked.
“Yes, we are already hard at work at fixing everything that was downloaded from your brain. Think of it as fixing a corrupted data file, it’s just sort of slow, but once you’ve found the error and fixed it, you can get 99.9% of the data back. With our AI working on it, we will have it fixed in no time, and I will let you know when that’s ready so you can log out safely; that will restore your memory. Shouldn’t take more than a few days in game, but every hour in game is only a minute in real time, so even if you spend a week here, it will only be three hours back in the real world.” Chyrel explained in that same cheerful tone.
Did that mean I’d lose 0.1% of my memories permanently? I wondered with some concern. But for now, I decided I wouldn’t make a fuss. Maybe once I was back in my real world body with the remaining 99.9% of my memories I would look into some legal action, I thought to myself. “Ok sure, let's fix my character so I can play while I wait,” I agreed as calmly as I could.
“This part should be fast,” Chyrel said cheerfully, “The character is already made, you made it before you got downloaded, so we just need to error check it.” Chyrel paused, “You would think that an error in the download process wouldn’t affect your ingame character, but it's all connected you know, the file includes all sorts of complicated neural mapping information so you can really feel like you are your character, every nerve has to have its own coding so that it matches its counterpart in your real brain. It's all interconnected, so if the download gets damaged, it can sometimes do odd things to your character file.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Ok,” I said, unconcerned about the technobabble. Maybe I’d once been able to understand that, but with my memories missing, it meant nothing to me.
“Here’s your appearance,” Chyrel said, conjuring up a mirror so I could see myself. “You made yourself buff, I’m guessing you’re meant to be an amazon, it's one of our more popular classes.” Chyrel commented.
In the mirror, a tall heavily muscled woman with modest breasts and a slim waist sporting an improbable six pack looked back at me. I was naked, and despite myself I found myself attracted to the image displayed. I was a sexy athletic amazon who looked far too pretty to have a body that sculpted with muscles. My dusky straw colored hair framed an oddly fragile looking face with perfectly proportioned features that did not look like it belonged with the body of an olympic class athlete below the neck. I was too masculine to be classically beautiful perhaps, but clearly I had spent a lot of time making this character because instantly, I realized whomever I’d been before losing my memories, I was looking at our ideal woman. I flexed a bicep experimentally. I was a very hot and very muscular woman, I realized; I clearly had a muscle fetish.
“So, here it is, huh, that’s weird, um… you’re not an amazon.” Chyrel commented in a distracted voice.
“What class am I?” I asked, flexing one improbably thick bicep in front of the mirror.
“Arcanist,” Chyrel answered, absentmindedly, “But that can’t be right, that’s not a valid class, that’s a class that wasn’t ever implemented. They cut it out of the game before release… your character information seems to have locked on to unused files in the system and it’s not letting me change it.”
“What’s an Arcanist anyways?” I asked.
“It’s a type of magic user that specializes in manipulating raw magical energy, most mages specialize in something, like wizards who pick elements like fire, or conjurors who summon demons, or shamans who draw magic from animal spirits. Arcanists meddle directly with magic itself, their gimmick is they start with no spells but can write their own spells by spending level points. It says here that the class was removed because it was too weak at low levels and too powerful in the hands of someone who is clever about using their level points. But how will you earn level points without any skills to level up with? No wonder they cut this class in the drawing room.” Chyrel said with a laugh.
“So I’m stuck with a broken class with no skills,” I asked, feeling pissed. They’d already lost my memories due to some glitch, and now my character was broken too? This sucked.
“Ah, well it's not quite like that,” Chyrel reassured me, looking frantic, “I know! I can’t change your class, but I can give you some starting skills. Normally you have to work pretty hard to get new skills, and you will be stuck with your starting skills for a long time, but since you don’t have any starting skills, let me give you the ones amazons start with. Here’s a skill book for archery.” She said, creating a tome and handing it to me.
As soon as I grabbed the book, a message appeared, “Would you like to learn the archery skill, (this is not a class skill for arcanists, progress will be halved)?”
“It says progress will be halved,” I told Chyrel grumpily. I still clicked yes though.
“Here,” Chyrel said, handing me a ring, “This is a moderator only item, but since you got stuck with a class you didn’t want on top of having your memories temporarily erased, I’ll give it to you, just don’t tell other players about it, or they’ll probably complain.”
I looked at the ring, a simple looking silver band that adjusted to fit any finger I tried it on, and a status screen informed me that it was: “Ring of Quick Learning, unique ring that triples the rate at which you learn all skills. Not intended for player use. Can not be transferred or stored.”
“You're not going to get in trouble for giving me this?” I asked Chyrel.
Chyrel looked uncomfortable, “Well, restoring your memories will let us log you out safely, then we will restart your character properly too, that will erase the ring.” She explained. “The ring is just for now so you can still play like normal even though you’re locked into a broken unimplemented class. Here is the spear tome, archery and spear are the two starting skills an amazon would normally have.”
Chyrel looked thoughtful, “They don’t have any arcanist trainers or arcanist quests in game yet, but I’ve got an idea. I’ll just change your in game identification tag so the non player characters will see you as an amazon and offer you the same quests and training as a real amazon. There, it’s almost the same as being a real amazon, well, except your stat growth is going to be different. That won’t be a problem for the early levels and we should get this sorted out for you pretty quick. Consider this character just a free trial character, ok?”
“So nothing I do with this character will matter?” I asked, concerned.
Chyrel shook her head, “Sorry, we’ll have to restart you once everything is fixed, but if you store things in the bank, it gets saved to your account, so it won't be a complete waste, ok? Since that ring can’t be stored it will disappear when you restart, but anything else you aquire you can save for your next character.”
I nodded unhappily, I used the spear tome and learned how to use spears. Both times I used the tomes I felt an infusion of knowledge, something almost like ghostly fatigue on my body as new information was engraved into my muscle memory.
“Here’s the set of amazon starting equipment,” Chyrel told, pointing to a box that suddenly appeared next to me.
I opened it up to find a spear, bow, knife, a quiver of arrows, and what looked to be a chainmail bikini. I strapped the flimsy outfit on and equipped both the spear and bow across my broad back. The quiver hung from one shapely hip on a leather belt that also included sheath for the knife.
“Cool,” I said, “but I feel like this bikini is going to get drafty in the winter. Do I know how to use this knife?” I asked, putting the knife in the provided sheath.
“Well, it's not part of the amazon starter skills,” Chyrel said, “because I think that knife is just meant for skinning, but I don’t see a problem with giving you the knife skill book too.” She created and handed me a third tome, the knife skillbook.
When I held it, it gave me the same message as before, “Would you like to learn the knife skill?” But I noticed that it didn’t mention that my progress would be halved. I guess arcanists were able to use the knife skill normally, I thought to myself. This meant that with the ring Chyrel had given me, I would learn to use the knife three times faster than normal if I used it in combat. Would it be worth giving up the advantages of using a spear if I could learn the knife twice as fast? I clicked yes on the pop up menu and decided to worry about it later. For now, it was enough to have that option.
“This is going to be great, we’ll get you back to your body in no time, you get to play while we work on fixing your memory, free of charge of course, and when everything is fixed, you get to start over with whatever items you’ve saved and whatever knowledge you’ve gained. It’s a win for everyone!” Chyrel gushed. “There is one tiny little thing you should know, technically, until we fix your character, you are a player ghost. Player ghosts can’t be saved and will be deleted upon death, so be careful not to die, until we fix you, ok?” She explained apologetically.
“Wait, what?” I asked, concerned.
“Don’t worry about it, you can’t die in the starting area, so you’ll be fine.” Chyrel said with an encouraging wink. “I will contact you regularly with updates, of course, or contact me at any time if you have any further questions; I’m on your friends list. For now, let me just teleport you to the amazon starting area and let your adventure begin!”
The world flashed blinding white before I had a chance to even react.