The minute before Earth’s unlucky chosen representatives were abducted by the Reality Engine Exploitation Coalition, I was standing on Grandpa’s porch, wearing his old duster and trying to remember not to raise my stirrup hoe in a way Deputy Young could take as threatening, while Sage clung to me screaming that the nasty old lady was going to take her away — and to be fair, Delores the Caseworker did have a face like a cat eating lemons.

There was a blinding flash of light and a whooshing followed by a popping sound. My ears throbbed. I blinked away the purple-white afterimage and looked around.

I was still standing on my porch holding the hoe. The deputy and the social worker lady were in the yard in front of me and Sage stood in the door of the trailer. But we weren't on the Arizona Strip anymore. The circle of grandpa's yard ended abruptly about ten feet past where Deputy Young was standing.

The front half of the deputy's truck was still parked in that circle. The other half was gone. Outside the circle was swampland. An enormous translucent box filled my vision full of words.

A voice started talking inside my head. It was a man’s voice, with weird tinny intonations, kind of like an airport announcer, but much more excited. He rumbled like he was about to introduce a batting lineup.

[Welcome Earthling! You have been selected as one of Earth’s representatives in your System’s attempt to claim the local Reality Engine for your species!]

“What the hell is going on?”

Sage was yelling, the deputy was shouting.

The words in the glowing box scrolled upward now as the voice read off the text.

[You have been placed in an attunement chamber. According to the agreement reached between this Reality Engine and the Exploitation Coalition, you will be allowed to progress in your quest if and only if you succeed in acquiring one Soul Coin in the next ten standard hours.

Succeed, and you will be permitted access into the Portal Antechamber of this Reality Engine. Fail, and you will be unable to exit the attunement chamber before it closes.]

I turned and the box followed me as the announcer kept talking. Deputy Young and Delores the caseworker, were shouting. But I didn't care about them. Sage stood transfixed, her eyes focused on the air, maybe reading the same words I was. "Grandpa!" I said, "Where's grandpa?"

I pushed past Sage into the trailer, or what was left of the trailer. Right through the door was the main room. It was mostly intact, but the far wall was gone, ripped off like a tornado went through. Beyond I could see the swamp. Trees hung with Spanish moss spread their lichen-stained branches against a grey sky.

It looked like the same circle I’d seen outside had extended all the way through and around our trailer, shaving off about half of it. Grandpa lay on his hospital bed in the middle of the room. He looked up at me, saying weakly, "What the hell is all this, boy?"

His once-bright eyes were dim with illness, and his chest rattled badly as he tried to speak. I leaned in closer. “— If this is the Rapture the Baptists were always on about, I’ll just see myself to the hot place,” he gasped, and fell back among his pillows.

His hospital gown had slipped off one shoulder, showing his weathered medicine pouch and, dangling from the same leather thong, my abuela’s Miraculous Medal. That was my grandpa; always sardonic, even in the worst of it. Always ready with a side-comment. Another wave of pain swept me at the sight of him so frail. It’d been six months since I last saw him, six months to go from a strong, hearty man in his sixties to — this.

The voice in my head and the scroll of text finished up. [So good luck, and happy mining!] The box vanished. The voice went silent.

Mining? Reality Engine? What was going on?

Earthling. Earth representative. Meaning whoever was talking wasn’t from Earth. They were — I didn’t like the world alien. Made me think of little green men.

Another box appeared. This one read:

[Shad Williams

Level 1 Unclassified miner

Skills: Choose a class to gain access to skills

Title(s): Corporal

HP: 20]

It knew my name, my preferred name not the “Shadrach” on all my government ids, and my rank. There was “miner” again. Miner, mining. Aliens had abducted me to mine an asteroid, maybe? And “HP”? All I could think of were health points, like in a game.

Sage popped through the door. “Where are we? What happened?” she asked. “Come help, I think the caseworker lady is about to lose it.”

I followed her back out and took a look around.

Tall cypress and tupelo leaned over banks of crumbling mud, frogs croaked unseen, some kind of bird trilled in the Spanish-moss covered branches. A little farther off, something moved just below the surface. I hoped it wasn’t a gator.

It looked just like a place I’d seen when I took leave to visit a friend for Mardi Gras who turned out not to actually be from New Orleans, but a place “just up the river”. In other words about fifteen hundred miles from the Arizona Strip. Not possible.

The yard around the trailer was turning to mud as water ran in from outside the circle of Arizona we’d brought with us.

Delores scrambled out of the mud onto the porch. Her white linen slacks were caked with dirt and even through her horn-rimmed glasses I could see mascara bleeding into her turquoise eyeshadow. “Deputy! Get me out of here right now!”

I boggled. It hadn’t registered before, but over her head, and Young’s, and Sage’s, were glowing blue labels — in her case, “Delores Atigua, Lvl 1” — and a green bar. Like a health bar in a damn videogame.

“Well now, ma’am, can’t really say where we are, but if you’ll give me a minute I’m working on it.” He turned to me, frowning, but lowered his piece. “Young Shad, you got any idea what’s going on here?”

“No, sir.” I stood a bit straighter, my military experiences reinforcing a whole misspent youth where the difference between a warning and a night in the precinct’s detention cell was in how I impressed Young, or one of his fellow officers of the law.

“Didn’t you get the admin message?” Sage cocked her head to one side. She wasn’t nearly as terrified as I’d expected. In fact her dark eyes sparkled. “We’ve been selected for initiation. All we have to do is find a Soul Coin. I s’pose after that we’ll get the next step of the quest.”

“This is not a suitable environment for a young girl!” Delores said.

I ignored Delores, as I’d been wanting to do all morning. I don’t like social workers. After Mom found meth and Dad found Meg — and Sarah and Juanita and Alice -- the social workers bounced me and Sage around between four homes, never together, until Grandpa found out and brought the full weight of the Indian Child Welfare Act down on them. He even had to register with the Kaibab band to do it, which he’d sworn never to do after the way those jerks treated him back in the 80s when he married Abuela — but that was almost a decade ago now, and hopefully Sage didn’t remember any of it.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“We gotta find a way out of here—” Deputy Young began, and something huge erupted out of the water.

I ducked back instinctively, raising my arm to shield myself. A spray of muck hit me in the face. Wild music started pounding in my head, like something from a German dance party. I’d been to my share of those while stationed over there. This had that same thump-thump-thump pounding bass, while a female voice yowled in some language I couldn’t make out.

The announcer started enunciating like a prizefight caller, way more excited than he had been before. [It’s a Fanged Spit-Toad. Level 3 common reptiloid, venomous!] A blinking box appeared in my view. I waved my hand furiously, trying to clear my vision.

“Get inside with Grandpa!” I shouted over the invisible speaker, and Sage splashed back to the bed, her face pale.

“It said level 3 and we’re only level 1! Be careful!”

I had bigger things to worry about, literally, as a huge, smart car-sized creature erupted from the murk. No way something that big could have been under there, the water was barely knee high.

It was bright pink and orange spotted, its huge silvery multi-faceted eyes bulged out of its head like disco balls, and it was heading right for me. It had a health bar. A great big green health bar that read [40/40] and all I could think was that’s twice what I have.

The prizefight announcer guy kept talking — [So what if toads are amphibians, not reptiles? He doesn’t care. You’re in his swamp, and now you’re lunch!]

I swung my hoe. It was about five feet long, fiberglass, and had an unsharpened loop of metal at the end. You pull sagebrush and tumbleweeds out by the root with a stirrup hoe, not chop through them. As a weapon, it was slightly better than nothing. I caught the monster toad in the side of the face. It let out an ear-splitting loud “blarp!” and then puked rainbows all over.

A floating [-1] appeared over the toad, and its health bar dropped just a little bit.

I dodged to the side, avoiding the stinking, multi-colored spew that just kept coming out of the toad’s mouth as it landed on its haunches in the swamp. A couple drops hit my oilcloth sleeve and started smoking. The toad’s eyes rotated balefully in their sockets, gleaming and winking.

Deputy Young shouted and raised his pistol. He fired off eight rounds, right at the creature from about fifteen feet away, and I saw all the bullets hit the toad’s flesh. They tore great big holes in its side, much larger than I expected for nine millimeter rounds. The toad blarped again and shifted, facing the deputy. I saw its legs crouching to spring.

I shouted and threw myself forward, smashing the hoe into the toad hard and knocking it aside. A big yellow box saying [Stunned!] appeared over its head. I scrambled back,

“It’s working!” Sage yelled. “Its health is going down!”

I censored a no shit.

“That hit took it to yellow! I think that’s halfway!” she called again.

I checked. She was right. The bar was yellow and it said [15/40]. Young’s bullets had done more than my hoe, for sure.

[Stunned!] went away. The toad lashed out with its tongue. I dove aside, but it wasn’t going for me, it was after Young. It wrapped around his torso and pulled him off his feet, toward the toad.

Young fired off another couple of rounds wildly, meaning he probably only had four or five left. “Stop that! You’ll hit us!” I shouted, but he wasn’t hearing me. He fired again as the toad yanked him right into its mouth. The gun flew from his hand and splashed into the steaming multi-colored muck where the toad had vomited.

That’s when I saw the fangs. The description had tried to warn us, but I wasn’t ready for foot-long gleaming crystal daggers. Young’s whole body was almost inside the toad’s mouth, about to get crunched. I could still see his health bar, floating over him; it was yellow and dropping. [6/20].

I dropped the hoe handle and seized Young’s legs. Yanking as hard as I could, I dragged him back from the toad. The tongue fought, but now Young was fighting back. He’d drawn a knife — how, I don’t know — and slashed blindly. One swing connected, half-severing the tongue. I yanked harder, and Young jerked free. We stumbled backward.

Young’s uniform was in tatters. Smoke rose off him. His face was a mess, covered in toad vomit, and he screamed as he tried to wipe his eyes. “It stings! It stings!”

Delores was shrieking somewhere behind me. I’d forgotten about her. Sage was shouting at her, but I didn’t have time to worry about them right now. I needed a weapon. My hoe was fifteen feet away, the gun was gone, but Young had the right idea. Any weapon in a pinch.

I stooped and grabbed a handful of muck. I threw it at the toad’s good eye, and hit the center of the glistening orb. I’ve always had good aim. Mud splattered across the gleaming facets.

The toad leapt for us. I grabbed Young’s arm and yanked him clear. The toad slammed heavily against the side of the trailer, flipped back, splattering us in mud. It came to a stop half-in, half out of the water.

“Shad!”

Sage stood on the porch, a long-barreled revolver in her hand, her eyes huge with fear through her glasses. I knew that gun; Grandpa’s Ruger Alaskan. Fully loaded with six rounds of 44 magnum. It was a boat anchor of a gun I had mocked him for buying. Home defense was one thing, but the Alaskan was more like overcompensation when carried in country lacking in grizzly bears.

Right now it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Sage threw it in a long, high arc like a pop fly.

Throwing a gun is a terrible idea, and I’d scold her for it at any other time, but right now I dove for that gun like right field going for a line drive. The toad croaked and turned for me. I caught the revolver, cradled it to my chest as I landed on my back in the mud. My view of the grim sky was obscured by an enormous falling toad.

I raised the gun, thumbed back the hammer, and shot three rounds, one after another, right into it. Each one was accompanied by a [-5] for the toad.

A box popped up. [You have bonded [Ruger Alaskan, 44 magnum]. This weapon may no longer be equipped by another miner.]

The toad missed me, landing hard nearby and slipping down into the water with a splash. Chunks of toad flesh rained down all around. I scrambled up, trying to keep the muzzle trained on the body. The toad’s body looked like I’d hit it with a grenade. Something about this place seemed to mean guns hit a lot harder than normal. Its health bar was gone, leaving a wan [0/40] over its corpse.

There was a burst of cheerful fanfare and a giant notification popped up saying [Winner!] Then a bunch of different achievements scrolled through my vision, almost too fast to read. Something about hitting a mob with a ranged weapon, giving me a bonus to using firearms. Another for using environmental elements as improvised weapons, probably for throwing the mud. One stuck out in particular: [Achievement! Damage an enemy with a firearm 1/100.] That looked like something that would progress as time went on.

I brushed them off and walked over to the toad to check on it.

The toad was dead all right. Its head had exploded. The multifaceted eyes were glazed over in death. They didn’t look so much like disco balls now.

“Are you all right?” I asked Sage, but Deputy Young answered.

“My eyes — I’m blind! I think it broke my ribs.” He leaned over and coughed, wincing in pain as he did. His healthbar was red. [3/20]. He was in bad shape. I’d have to help him inside and find the first aid kit while we tried to figure out how to call 911 from here.

I set a hand on the disgusting toad and another box popped up.

[Fanged Spit-Toad. Killed by Shad Williams, assist from Frank Young. Loot first choice to Shad Williams.]

Then a list:

[1 toad spleen (crafting ingredient, poisonous)

1 partially digested swamp fly

1 common Soul Coin.]

“I can see that!” Young said. “How come I can see that and nothing else?”

I took my hand off the toad and the box changed.

[You have Passed. Loot given to Frank Young].

“Hey wait!” I yelled at the sky. “I didn’t pass, I didn’t do anything.”

“What’s all this — wait, what’s happening to me?”

I looked over at Young. The deputy was still bent over, but now he was glowing. A golden light enveloped him. He reached skyward, a look of ecstasy on his face.

His healthbar shot all the way back up to full green. The glow vanished. He opened his eyes. “I can see,” he said, as a grin spread across his face. “My ribs don’t hurt — the message says I have attuned and will have access to a class after the introductory phase.” He frowned. “Don’t want a class about all this shit, I want to get out of here and back to the Strip.”

“It’s not that kind of class.” I could hear Sage rolling her eyes as she spoke.

“What just happened?” I asked, but Delores, who had finally stopped screaming, stepped forward. She scrutinized Young.

“Frank, you look like you did fifteen years ago. You just lost twenty pounds and I think your hair’s growing back.”

I had been so overwhelmed, I hadn’t noticed, but she was right. Whatever had happened to Young, he looked way healthier than he had when he’d heaved himself out of his Explorer back on Grandpa’s property.

“I absorbed the Soul Coin, and it attuned me. Dunno what that means, but I like it.” Frank held up a hand, staring at it. “I had a scar on my wrist, it’s gone too. What the hell is happening?”

“I want one!” Delores turned on me with a wild, hungry look in her eyes. “I need one of those Soul Coins. Right now.”

But I wasn’t looking at her, I was staring over the dead toad’s bulk at Sage, and she was nodding, because she’d just had the same thought I did. I slogged through the muck and leaned over to mutter in her ear. “We have to get one of those for Grandpa. Right now.”