Strange birds flew overhead as they walked down what appeared to be a winding path of packed dirt. It seemed an unnatural thing to Heather, a sort of bare strip worn by the passage of a thousand feet. All around it waved tall grass and flowering shrubs, indicating a fertile and lush land, yet the path remained bare. She asked Frank who made the path and kept it from being absorbed by the grassland. He could only shrug, saying the path had always been there.
“Somebody must have made them, though,” she insisted and kicked at the dirt, creating a little cloud. “They don't look natural.”
“The paths were here when I translated in,” he replied with a glance at the ground. “I seem to recall they have always been the same.”
“A path doesn’t just appear,” Heather pressed. “This looks so well worn you would think a hundred people walked it every day.”
“I don’t know. Maybe there were a lot more people in the beginning,” he admitted.
She glanced to the worn paths and gave up. Nothing about this world made any sense, so why should the paths? She decided to focus her attention on something more fruitful and looked ahead to the trees. Initially, they had appeared to be an hour's walk away, yet she was confident they had been walking for several hours now, and the trees hadn't come any closer.
“Why does it seem like we're no closer than we were this morning?” she asked.
“It's the strangeness of this place,” Frank said. “Something about it is off. Some things that look far away are very close, and some things that look close are very far away. I went near a city once and spoke to a guy who told me that the mountains looked huge.”
“You’ve never seen one?” Heather asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be away from my graveyard for too long.”
“But you're away from it now?”
He glanced at her briefly and nodded. “This isn't that far, and I have skeletons to protect it now. If I level up enough, I can invest a dungeon heart, and then I can go farther.”
“What’s a dungeon heart?” she asked as more unfamiliar words danced in her mind.
“It's a magical device you hide deep underground. If you die, you will revive at the dungeon heart without having to reset.”
Heather shook her head as the terms he used still made little sense. She got one point out of it, though, and that was he didn't have to reset.
“So if you have a dungeon heart, you're like a chosen then?”
“No, it just means I can revive. Players can destroy my dungeon heart, forcing me to buy a new one.”
Heather was confused by this point and dared the obvious question. “Why would they do that?”
“Because everybody is trying to level up, and a dungeon heart is worth a lot of XP,” he replied, sounding once again as if the answer was obvious.
Whatever this magical device was, it was important to Frank so he wouldn't reset and to others for experience. It seemed odd that something so important to his well-being would be a boon to players trying to take it. It was almost as if the visitors wanted to encourage people to harm one another. It made little sense, but then, what did she know about this place? Unable to reconcile the thought, she nodded her head and went back to why he said he wanted it.
“So if you have this heart, you can travel farther?”
“I think I need to explain it better,” he said. “If I die right now, I will reset because I am outside my lair. If I die in my graveyard, I will sink into the soil and revive a day later. So long as I die in the graveyard, I won't reset. However, if I have a dungeon heart, I could go anywhere, and if I die, I will revive next to the heart. I can even manage some of the aspects of the graveyard while I'm away.”
“But if you leave, people can come in and destroy the heart?”
“Exactly. It gives me the ability to leave my lair but also becomes my weakness. I have to hide it carefully and protect it with traps and monsters to make sure nobody finds it.”
Heather felt tired as her mind labored on the concept. So it was a way of granting him more freedom inside the mechanics of the world, yet it also became a weakness. She tried to put it together with some of his earlier comments, eventually coming to some questions.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to build your graveyard up to be a big adventure?”
He nodded and went over the details again, talking about tunnels and pyramids and grand mausoleums. He was enthusiastic again, like a boy at Christmas staring at a pile of presents. She followed along, but his enthusiasm painted a sour image forcing another question.
“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” she began. “You want to make a place for players to adventure and have fun, but you’re afraid of them coming because they might kill you, destroy your graveyard, and if you had one, break your dungeon heart.”
“You don't understand how it all works,” he replied. “In order to level, all players have to earn experience. There are lots of ways to do it, but the best ways are to fight things. I earn just as much experience from killing players as they do for killing me. I also earn some when players kill the monsters that spawn in my lair, like the skeletons. In addition, I can earn points that can be spent on the graveyard by sacrificing treasure or items I get from players. So yes, I do want them to come, but I am also afraid of what might happen if they do.”
“Alright, I vaguely understand that, but then I don't understand why anybody would reset you?”
Frank let out a deep sigh and explained how some players didn't play solely for the experience. Some played to be cruel or simply saw wiping out a monster's lair as winning. To them, the adventure wasn't over until the lair was gone. To do that, they had to reset the player who built it.”
“But wouldn't they get even more experience if they let you grow and build a bigger lair?” she asked, not able to reconcile the two points.
“They would, but they don’t see it that way,” he replied with a scratch at his head. “It’s all part of the system and a risk I have to take.”
Heather could hear the enthusiasm fading fast as he spoke with a defeated tone. She still didn't understand it, but now she was curious about him.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking this, but how did you, you know, get in here?” she asked.
“The same way everybody else does,” Frank replied. “I went to one of the collection sites.”
Heather sighed in frustration as her lack of knowledge continued to haunt her. The visitors had come over ten years ago, but she had been young back then and paid very little attention. As the years rolled by, the sensation of their arrival died down, and life went back to a more or less normal pace. She had school and a family to keep her occupied while the visitors stayed in their ships high in orbit. She knew from the news that great efforts had been made to communicate with them. All of these efforts failed as the visitors didn't even use the same kind of technology. In fact, she seemed to recall reading that they didn't even use sound to communicate. This left both sides desperate to find some way to bridge the gap and open a dialog.
Then one day, it happened, and a dialog of sorts was opened. The visitors discovered a way to tap into the internet and observed our games. From inside a game, they began to communicate using text as the medium. It was all over the news the first garbled messages translated to say they meant us no harm and wanted to observe and learn about our cultures and history. Most importantly, they wanted to learn about human nature and what we cared about. They lamented that there was no way they could walk among us but offered another idea. That idea was New Eden.
They would use their technology to create a world based on hundreds of games they were observing. They asked for volunteers to enter this game and share in the experience so they could watch and learn. The problem, if she remembered correctly, was that people who went in could never come back. Remembering that point made her stomach sink as she realized that, even if she had her panel, it was very likely she wouldn’t be able to leave. She seemed to recall people on campus talking fearfully about being trapped inside an alien world.
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Nervously she glanced at Frank, squinting to avoid seeing his yellow eyes and pointed teeth. He overcame that fear and volunteered to go in, but how was that done? She recalled there were collection sites around the world, but what did that mean?
“Is something wrong?” he asked as she came to her final thought.
“No, I was just thinking. I know it was all over the news, but I don't actually know what a collection site is. How do they work?” she asked, feeling ashamed for knowing so little of such a historic event.
“Those are really neat,” he began. It's a little building made out of what looks like one piece of metal or plastic. Next to it is a sort of ring about five meters across made out of the same stuff. You arrive by bus or whatever the place uses and go inside the building. There are these computer-like things built into the wall. I think the visitors were trying to copy our systems to give us an interface, but they look odd and don't use a mouse. You do most of the work by touching the screen.”
“What do you use them for?” Heather asked, now enthralled by the conversation.
He scratched at his head as he thought back, causing her to twist in anticipation.
“You use them to design what you want to be. All the choices are laid out in endless menus, and you have to spend hours making all your selections. Then when you're done, you submit the choices and stand in the ring. Every few hours, a blue light appears in the center and grows to the size of a car. All you have to do is walk into the light.”
“And then what?”
“And then you’re here,” he said. “I don’t remember anything else but waking up in the forest.”
“Weren’t you scared to go into the light?”
“A little, but there were other people there with me, and they started going in.”
“I don't think I would have,” she said. “I would have run and hidden inside the building.”
“You're a chosen, so you didn't have to,” he said.
“But why?” Heather asked. “What’s so special about me?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Are you super smart?”
Heather thought back to school and her grades. She was passing all her classes with high marks, but that was because she worked hard. When it came to doing smart things like building robots or space ships, she was clueless. She did like math and was fascinated by numerology and man's spiritual nature, but that hardly made her smart.
“I don't think I'm dumb, but I'm not a genius,” she admitted.
“Hmm, are you artistic?” he pressed, searching for a reason.
Heather had to admit she wasn’t that either.
“Are you good with music?”
She shook her head to that one too.
He began to roll off a list of possible talents, from singing to ice skating, and she answered no to all of them.
“Can you do anything special?”
“No, I can't!” she yelled, suddenly angry at the long list of things she couldn’t do.
“Why are you mad all of a sudden?” he asked.
“Because I'm not special, and I don't need to be reminded of it,” she said.
Frank shrugged and walked on. “Well, you're obviously wrong. There is something special about you.”
Like what?” she snapped.
“I don't know, but the visitors do. Whatever it is, it's so special they were desperate to have you here so they could see it. You should think about it; there must be something truly amazing about you.”
She thought about that a moment and had to chew on a lip. “What did they see in me that was special?” she whispered more to herself than him. She went to ponder this more deeply when Frank stopped.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“There's a Nillac herd ahead. We need to let it pass,” he said, pointing down the road.
Heather looked up to see a river of small colorful creatures flowing across the trail. They were balls of fur the size of a human head with rows of stubby little feet on their underside, reminding her of round caterpillars. Each had a pair of black antennae on its head that ended in a glowing ball. They had large dark eyes and tiny button noses over a wide mouth. The hair on their faces parted over the mouth, making them all look like they wore mustaches.
“They're so cute!” Heather exclaimed and went to move closer.
“What are you doing?” Frank asked as he stepped in front of her.
“I want to pet one,” she said.
“Are you crazy!” Frank snapped. “Those are Nillacs!”
Heather stepped around him and walked boldly down the trail. “I'm not afraid of a herd of furry emoji's,” she said.
“Wait! Come back!” Frank shouted as she strode closer.
One of the furry creatures saw her approach and turned, Its big dark eyes sparkling in the sun, as its green furry mustache twitched. It made a little bouncing jump as if happy to see her, producing a little squeak that made her giggle. The fuzzy creatures enthralled Heather, and in moments a dozen more noticed her coming.
Heather!” Frank yelled from fifty feet back.” Those are land piranha!”
She froze in her steps and locked eyes with the closest creature. It suddenly reared up and hissed, revealing a mouth that was too large for its head and filled with double rows of razor-sharp teeth. The entire herd turned around and made the same hissing sound but was drowned out by Heather's piercing scream.
“Why didn’t you tell me that sooner!” she yelled as she raced to Frank, who urged her to keep going.
“I was trying to tell you!” he huffed as he ran beside her, awkwardly flailing his arms.
“Why is everything in this world so horrible?” she cried, looking back as the mass of color poured over the land behind her.
Because they based it on our video games,” he said. “And a lot of games have cute enemies.”
“So video games really are bad!” she yelled.
“You can complain about it later!” he yelled as he looked over his shoulder to see the stubby creatures pursuing them.
“I want out!” Heather yelled to the uncaring sky. “I want out, and I want this place closed!”
“That's not going to work,” he said.
“Then what will work?” she snapped as mass hissing filled her ears.
“We need a place to hide!” Frank yelled. “If they lose sight of us, they will stop chasing.”
Heather looked around the rolling grassland and spotted a large rock to their right.
“Can we hide behind that?” she said with a pointed finger.
“That should work,” he puffed and led her off the trail and across the field to the rock. The stubby creatures were slow, and Heather and Frank reached the rock well ahead of them. They crouched together on the far side and waited as Heather’s heart pounded.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” she whispered in a harsh voice. “I refuse to be eaten by killer emojis.”
“Then you should have listened to me and stayed away from them,” he replied. “You can’t trust anything in this world, no matter how cute it looks.”
Heather covered her ears as the hissing grew louder, rocking in place as she squatted behind the rock. This whole experience was horrible, and she hated the fact that it might be forever. Her eyes began to water as the noise grew louder, her panic nearly getting the better of her.
“Hey,” Frank said in a soothing tone. “Listen, nilacs are easy to get away from. They have really poor eyesight. If they don't see you anymore, they will give up and move on.”
Heather nodded as she shook from head to toe. In her panic to know they were gone, she went to peek over the rock, but Frank pulled her down.
“Just sit and wait a few minutes,” he insisted.
She sat on her rear with her back to the rock and pulled up her knees. Thankfully she was in her comfy shoes, and running hadn't been too hard. If she had on some of her dressy shoes back home, running would have been impossible. She tried to humor herself by imagining being eaten just because she had on high heels.
“You can't trust anything here,” Frank reiterated, bringing her out of her thoughts.
“I trusted you!” she snapped.
“I'm a player, and I introduced myself,” he argued. “But the animals here are mostly dangerous. You can't pet them no matter how friendly they look.”
Just want out of this crazy place!” she groaned.
“We would be a whole lot closer to your panel if you hadn’t tried to feed the nillacs,” he protested with an almost angry tone.
“Who would make something so dangerous look so cutie?” she lamented.
“You never played any Japanese role-playing games, did you?”
Heather shook her head. “I don’t play video games.”
“It shows,” he said before continuing. “They have a lot of cute monsters in their games. I think the visitors borrowed heavily from a lot of their enemies.”
“Don’t they have any nice games?” she asked, struggling to get control of her breathing.
“Well,” he said as he thought back. “There are a lot of safe games, but they aren't massively multiplayer. I think the visitors were after the big multiplayer aspect. Luckily, they didn't base it on a zombie plague game.”
“I will count my lucky stars,” she said in a pout as her breathing normalized. “How long do we have to hide here?”
“Just until we think they are far enough away that they won’t see us,” he said.
She sat there pouting and waiting until her body betrayed her with a loud groan. She realized she hadn't eaten since before she was chosen, and that was over a day ago. Her stomach rumbled again, and she put a hand over it and pressed it in. “Shh! You will draw the nillacs!”
“Are you hungry?” Frank asked.
“No!” she snapped and looked away, but her stomach groaned again as if to call her a liar.
“I think there are fruit trees in the forest,” he said.
“The forest that still looks like it’s a hundred miles away?” she asked.
“It isn’t a hundred miles away,” he protested. “You exaggerate everything.”
“You just told me nothing looks right in this world and that things in the distance might be closer or farther than they seem.”
He sighed and waved a clawed hand at her. “The forest can’t be more than an hour away now. I have walked to it three times since I’ve been here.”
“For what?”
“To look for new players,” he said, letting out a sigh as he looked away. “I told you, I’m starting to feel lonely. It’s boring to be out here all by yourself.”
She remembered the conversation from earlier and her silent promise to be nicer. She swallowed her anger and looked at Frank, who was drawing a circle in the dirt with a claw.
“I'm sorry,” she said and looked away. “I don't mean to be so rude to you. You have been a good guy, and I keep losing my temper. It's just I can't accept the idea of being in here, and I feel a terrible fear that I won't ever get out.”
He looked up from his circle. “It's ok. I know you didn't want to be here, and this is confusing to you.”
“It's more than confusing,” Heather said as she wiped one of her eyes. “I don't know what I'm doing or what half the things you say mean. I feel like I am in prison in a foreign country where I don't know the language, and everybody wants to kill me.”
“It isn't like that,” Frank said. “I guess since you didn't play games, it all seems terrible and dangerous, but it can also be amazing. You just need some time to get over your shock and clear your head.”
Heather nodded with a sniff. “Maybe, but that’s still no excuse to be so rude to you.”
“Well, we are probably safe to get going,” he suggested. “With any luck, you will have your panel in an hour or two, and things will be better. Trust me; once you have your panel, it will all make more sense.”
She nodded, and they carefully peeked over the rock. Not a furry ball of color was seen. Slowly they crept out, looking in all directions as they headed back. They found a path of trampled grass where the little monsters had passed not thirty feet from the stone. She nearly jumped when her stomach groaned, reminding them they needed to reach the forest for the panel and food. Cautiously they returned to the trail and headed for the distant trees, Heather hopeful that the panel would show her a way out.