"Ahrg!" Shouted Lina at her computer screen.

She had once again been tasked to fix the last few bugs for the new nightly release because everyone else had a better excuse than her. Just because she was kind of new and didn’t have kids did not mean, she had too much time on her hands or did not need sleep, but she just could not bring herself to refuse her boss and she at least got paid good money for the nightly shifts full of energy drinks, potato chips and frustration. Lina had just begun working at her new job as a software engineer, which sounded and paid better than programmer but was essentially the same with a fancy degree. It was a good-paying job for a fresh graduate, but not especially exciting. Legacy code was legacy code after all and nobody liked working with it.

Well, at least her colleagues were nice, as were most programmers. Maybe she just thought that because she was one of them, but most programmers and computer scientists were pretty straightforward, not interested in internal squabbling and political games, just genuinely interested in solving problems and working together. Not like those finance and human resource people. Those were always so tedious to work with.

Grimacing at her thoughts, she looked out of the window into the snowy winter night. She really wasn’t a fan of all the darkness, during that time of year, but she was thankful for the crisp winter air keeping her awake and her brain sharp. Nothing was worse for her work than being too comfortable. Her brain just didn’t work well when everything was perfect and when you mucked around with a program so big, that nobody could ever understand in its entirety, a well-working brain was paramount.

"Well, let’s try again. "She muttered to herself, as she once again compiled the code and deployed it on her local machine.

Usually, she could now check her E-mails, social media or chat with people, because building and deploying large applications like the one she was working on took longer than most people would think, but this time something was different. Suddenly something strange occurred, she saw pink and blueish light travel across her screen, mesmerizing her. She didn’t know what it was, but it kind of spoke to her and... some of the otherworldly rivers of light came out and streamed toward her?!

“What the…”

Was she hallucinating? Surely, she was, or was one of her coworkers just pranking her? Was something like this even possible? One of her colleagues had a knack for graphics stuff like that, which she couldn’t care less about, being more interested in interesting algorithms and computer vision herself, and he sometimes sneaked it into the office network with his administrator account. Some of his stuff looked a bit like that, optical illusions, that made it seem like the graphics were truly 3D. She thought about calling him, it looked really beautiful, and he was probably awake anyway, fiddling with a new framework or something. Maybe he could tell her, who was responsible for that if it wasn’t him, that was. Before she could do that, however, a wave of tiredness overwhelmed her. Suddenly drowsy as if she hadn’t slept for 3 days straight, she struggled to stay awake. She reached for her phone to call an ambulance, but other than knocking it off her table, she achieved nothing. The last thing she noticed was the world spinning as she finally lost consciousness.

"Whaa..?" She grumbled as she awoke bathed in warm sunlight.

It was very comfortable, but something was off, wasn’t she supposed to be in her office? And wasn’t it supposed to be night and winter? Her surroundings looked more like a late morning in summer. She sprang to her feet, this wasn’t right and... why was she naked? As quickly as possible, she tried to hide her womanly features. Standing there blushing, she noticed, that she was all alone and slowly lowered her arms again. She didn’t need to cover herself if nobody could see her.

"Focus, Lina, this isn’t the time to think about that. Where the fuck am I? "

She looked to the left and to the right, up and down, to the front and back over her shoulder.

“Yep as I thought, I have no clue, where I am.”

She was standing in a rather wide clearing in a lush, dense forest. She didn‘t recognize the trees, but she had never been good with that kind of thing, so at least that was normal. Her parents, particularly her mother, always wanted her to know things like this. Her mother grew up in a small village and often went into the woods to search for wild mushrooms or fruit, but Lina had never been interested in that. She didn’t mind coming along once in a while, but she wasn’t an outdoorsy person and never really wanted to be one, which arguably was a mistake, because it would be quite helpful now.

"Have I been drinking alcohol instead of energy drinks and wandered off in the middle of the night? Without my clothes, phone, keys... No, that can’t be right, I am not that stupid… I hope. "

As Lina tried to remember what exactly happened after she noticed that strange light coming out of her computer screen, she sighed. There was just nothing, one moment she was in her office, and now she was… yeah, where was she?

As she looked around, trying not to panic, she noticed some kind of icon hovering in the air. "That is... new? Have I been drinking after all? I am not a video game character.” she chuckled.

Despite her thoughts, she tried to move her hand to touch the icon, but just as she thought about that some kind of half-transparent window opened in front of her. It had a slightly pink hue with a light blue accenting it, remembering her of the strange light show in her office. The window was inlaid with some kind of grid pattern. Finally, right at the top of the window was a title which read inventory.

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“Alright, I am clearly hallucinating, since that is not possible, well at least not without a VR headset, and I am not wearing one.”

She took another look at the window and noticed, that two of the squares were not empty. She focused on the first one.

“What is that?” She thought to herself and promptly got the answer, as a pop-up window popped up beside the square, reading

‘Summer dress. A light dress made from the silk of a dragonspider. Protects against sunburn, regulates temperature to make every day feel like a sunny summer afternoon and is virtually indestructible.‘

The description was accompanied by a large rotating video thingy, that showcased the dress, which admittedly looked very cute, but Lina, nevertheless, wasn’t happy at all.

"Really? It had to be a dress because I am a girl or what? That’s sexist af. Whoever is responsible for this should get slapped. I mean, what is this? The last time I wore something like this dainty little thing was in primary school. And what does "indestructible" mean? It can’t be meant literally, can it? "

Lina didn’t know too much about physics, but she wasn’t uneducated either, so the notion of something being indestructible was just preposterous to her. Humans could literally split atoms, smash protons into each other and observe the results. Sure, she couldn’t do any of that right now, but that alone would mean the thing was not in fact indestructible.

She sighed and tried to just pluck the dress out of her inventory like in a video game, that had a drag-and-drop menu, which somehow were not all games that featured an inventory like that, which was something, that made her instantly hate a game and surprisingly enough it worked.

"Indestructible" She muttered and tried to tear the flimsy-looking piece of cloth apart, but it didn’t even stretch. She wasn’t done though and tried to poke a hole into it with her fingernail. When that didn’t work, she even tried biting through some strands of silk, but they were harder than steel.

"This isn’t possible" she muttered, frustrated.

"Now that I think about it, what even is a dragon spider? I don’t know much about spiders, but I have never heard that name. Well, it probably lives in Australia and is a venomous prick. Wait, am I in Australia? "

She shook her head and sighed. She wasn’t getting anywhere like that, and she was still standing outside naked as when she was born.

Reluctantly, she slipped the dress over her body. Light blue... why did it have to be light blue? She usually dressed as adultly as possible, which to her meant black, white, grey, and maybe the obligatory Christmas sweater, that her mom sent her every year, whether she wanted one or not.

"Well, at least I am not naked any more, even if this is probably just a dream. Wait. Why haven’t I tried waking myself up? Lina, you are so stupid. And why do you talk to yourself in third person…? I should spend more time with other people. " She sighed.

Not wasting any more time, she tried pinching herself, but the only result was pain and a red spot on her arm.

“Well, that worked like a charm.” She thought and wondered what she should do next.

Not having a better option, she just started wandering straight in one direction. She didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know all those neat tricks about on which side of a tree moss was and anything was better than standing around waiting for something to happen.

She had something of a tunnel vision, so she didn’t notice how odd the forest was, the only thing she did notice, was how much not having shoes sucked. how could hippies in the 60s live like that? She shook her head. She would never understand people like that. Being one with nature was one thing, but after stumbling through the forest for what felt like ages, she yearned for some sturdy footwear.

As she was thinking about trivial things like that, she heard some rustling in the relatively nearby bushes.

"Who is there? " She shouted.

"I think she noticed us boys. "

The voice came from a rather tall man, who looked like he was around 40 years old, and not the kind of man a young woman wanted to be alone with. A rough beard, strong, burly arms and a beer belly. With him, he had 2 not as tough looking guys, who were around 15 or 16 years old if she had to guess and were probably his sons or underlings or something.

"Look at that silky dress, very fine, she’s probably one of them rich pricks, lost in the woods and ready to be taken. I bet her parents will pay a handsome sum for her. Go, get her boys, be useful for once. " The man ordered, grinning from ear to ear.

Lina felt her heart drop to her knees. Those were obviously not the kind of people she wanted to be around, and she very much did not want to be, kidnapped. So, she did the only thing she could think of. She ran as fast as she could, which wasn't as fast as she would have liked, which was most likely due to her rather sedentary lifestyle and the fact she didn’t have shoes.

As a normal human being, who didn’t live under a rock, she knew, that some people, who liked jogging, used apps, that simulated a zombie horde chasing you or something like that. She had used one of them herself before when she tried to be a bit healthier, but it didn’t work. She always knew it was fake and didn’t care about some imaginary zombies getting her.

Being chased by bandits for real, however, let her reach heights, she never knew possible. She ran and ran, kilometre after kilometre, she ran day and night, through summer and winter, over mountains and through scorching deserts. Well, at least in her imagination. In reality, she began slowing down after not even two minutes. The bandits obviously were fitter than her and steadily shortened the distance between them and her.

"Please, if there is a god, help me escape those guys and I will never badmouth Christianity again. "

Whether it was a god’s doing or not, she did not know. What she knew, was, that it wasn’t good because she suddenly stumbled over a root and fell, right into a bush and didn’t stop? Under the bush were no branches, roots or even ground, there was just nothing there.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" She screamed, certain, that she would die. Several seconds later, she hit water and against all expectations did not splatter across the ground like an overripe tomato, she didn’t injure herself at all, and it wasn’t painful, which was odd, because she should most certainly have died.