To my shock I emerged from the portal mid-air, thousands of feet above the ground. The lack of a platform or anything to stand on combined with the reality of gravity and I plummeted downward with the grace of an ACME-equipped coyote.

As I fell, the music began. Brassy horns kicked into a lively drum beat and with horror I realized I recognized the song.

“Young man…”

I groaned.

“There’s no need to feel down”

I had to be dreaming.

“I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground”

As I rocketed downward, I tried to think of a good reason why the Village People’s YMCA was playing but since nothing came to mind, I decided to ignore it and focus on my surroundings.

I was high above a massive valley that looked like the one they always use in cowboy movies, with the massive sandstone pillars, but as if it was painted by a schizophrenic on LSD. Instead of the familiar red, brown, and orange tones, the terrain was rich with purples, blues, reds, greens, and myriad other colors, including some more traditionally found on Italian hypercars.

What was the name…? I racked my brain and suddenly, it came to me. Monument Valley. That’s what it was called on Earth, Monument Valley. It’s in Arizona or New Mexico or something, but wherever it is, it’s famous and I’d always meant to visit.

It was gone now, along with the Earth, the station, and everyone I’d ever known, except Hannah. I felt a rush of regret and loss and my emotions began to overwhelm me.

Time to put those nasty feelings away in their own little soccer balls to be accessed and processed never. Oh, I liked to lie to myself and pretend I’d eventually take the time to work through those emotions, but so far I’d yet to start.

I mentally created my soccer ball and…

And nothing. A system message popped up:

Encapsulation Failed. Skill Not Attained. Visit a trainer for more information.

That was new.

As my impending splattering was more pressing, I dismissed the popup with a thought and looked around.

“I said, young man, put your pride on the shelf”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

In the distance, instead of an endless horizon, as I looked around, I realized an energy curtain surrounded the entire valley. It extended from the ground up into space so it couldn’t be on Earth.

That thought was replaced by yet another revelation. Although the wind was whipping by my head, my eyes weren’t watering. I could breathe without effort as well, so the rushing wind had no practical effect on me outside of the noise. I wasn’t cold either, and I should have been.

Maybe I really was dead.

As I continued to fall, objects on the ground started to resolve. The zone, as I was now calling it, was split in half by a thin dirt road that extended far into the distance, all the way to the barrier.

As I focused on it, the road shimmered and flickered and with a start I realized the scene on the road had changed.

I began to see dots on the road and the closer to the ground I fell, the more the dots came into focus until I could see they were people, around 4 to 5 of them walking together into the distance. The road flickered again and the location of the group changed so that the people were a little farther down the road.

“It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!”

It flickered again, but the group was closer to the beginning this time. This continued, with the group disappearing and reappearing up and down the road until I was close enough to be able to distinguish colors. With a start, I realized my assumptions were wrong.

It wasn’t the same group over and over again. Every time my view changed, it showed a different group in a different location on the road, a fact that was interesting but not as much as the rapidly approaching ground.

With a start I noticed one of the groups was wearing white cowboy hats. One of the white dots below me must be Hannah!

All of a sudden I realized what was going on. I’d played MMOs before where there were limited resources and the way the system handled it was to create “layers”, separate instances of the game area where players could co-exist without even seeing each other.

This had to be what was happening. Each scene, every shift where a group was in a different place on the road had to be a layer, like a parallel universe. It was a good way to reuse game assets, I thought, but then I remembered I was plunging toward certain death and my time on this plane was coming to an end.

I idly wondered if it would hurt when I hit then idly wondered why I wasn’t terrified. In the last hour I’d seen everything I’d ever known wiped out, my old friend blown up, my sister was a secret government agent or something and I was about to leave a very small smear on the ground.

For some reason there was no emotional connection. I should have been frozen in terror, but I only felt like a disinterested observer.

I stuck my belly out in a reverse arch, like I’d seen skydivers do in movies and continued to fall, arms and legs thrust out, using my hands and feet to help rotate my body forward so I could see the ground better.

The road ceased flickering and became completely deserted, without a single person in sight. All that was left was … Was that a stage? Below me was a rapidly approaching square with stairs on one side. It was devoid of life, but I did my best to glide in its direction anyway.

As I rocketed downward, the stage resolved and I could see a dozen or so chairs scattered, a podium, some flags flapped, papers drifted, and with a sigh of resignation, I aimed at the center of the stage.

The last thing I thought before I hit was one word, a word I’d never heard or said before.

“Horsefeathers.”