So she wasn’t going crazy. Numbly, she followed Prof inside, holding back tears for the second time that day. This time though, they were tears of relief. It was so easy to believe that she had lost it. Even if she had always been able to accommodate her disability, she had always been treated like she was crazy. It had been like she had fulfilled this predetermined path they had set for her. The musky smell of Prof’s books brought her out of her revery and she went to sit down at his two-seater table.
“You got stats too?” She was glad he was the one that spoke up again, she still had too much lingering anxiety to voice any of it.
“Yeah, I really thought I was going crazy.” She shook her head. He gaffed at her, his face crinkling at the smile. “What happens now?” and it was as if the system had heard her question, the blue dot expanding again to let text obscure her vision.
Come to the Tutorial Area to receive your Quest!
“I guess we’re going outside?” James sighed. Normally going outside took some preparation, but James didn’t know what she could prepare for. If she really assumed this was real, it was so outside of her wheelhouse she had nothing she could draw from to help. Would she even be able to avoid people if they all received the same notification? “I’ll go grab a jacket and some real shoes. We’ll meet in the hallway in five minutes?” They exchanged a quick goodbye and James went to get her stuff. Putting on her running shoes, just because they were Nike and “Just do it!” seemed to fit the situation, as well as her athletic jacket to complete the outfit, she got back outside to the hallway.
Going down the stairs together, James going slowly to accommodate for Prof’s (literally) creaky knees and hips, they opened the front door of the lobby and stared in shock. James still remembered looking out the window that morning and thinking idly that rain wasn’t in the forecast.
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While that thought still remained true, at least if they were in the same type of ecosystem, almost everything else about the street had changed. Or, more accurately, seemed to suffer from a change in scale. The road and sidewalk had gotten much wider, the previous two-way road would have now been able to accommodate five lanes. The distance between the condo buildings had also increased, almost a lot size in between every building. And that space wasn’t empty, instead it seemed to be filled with shrubbery which seemed to grow in front of their very eyes.
James could also feel how that area was an oncoming headache, but she didn’t mention it. Either Prof was in the same boat, or she was suffering a mental break down brought on by this calamity.
The streets being so wide at least made sure that she wasn’t too close to other people, probably the only reason she was able to tolerate so many of them being around her at the moment. Because the street was fuller than she had ever seen it, even more than move-in week at the beginning of the semester when everyone seemed to come into town and swell its population size into a proper college town.
And yet, all of this was a change to what was already there. So it wasn’t as striking as the large, empty road signs placed along the street in the new empty lots. They were thin, probably only around a centimeter, and a soft matt white. Nudging Prof to follow her, James examined one up close, not finding any ridges or marks of how it was made. Maybe it was created with a 3D printer?
“Tutorial participants-”
James nearly screamed as she stumbled back and away from the screen. She could even feel a small headache now attached to it, a concept she could wait to explore until she went to bed later. Along with a slew of other, frankly much more important, issues.
“Please proceed to the tutorial area.”
A map appeared on the white surface, directing the horde of confused people down three more blocks and one block to the right until the map showed a green park with a structure in it. The message repeated itself in that same monotonic voice, with just enough inflection in it for James to wonder if it was robotic or human. The map remained permanently displayed now, and James wondered idly how she would deal with all of those people descending on that small area. Clearly this tutorial was not created for someone with social anxiety.