Whoah.

I mean, whoah like Bill and Ted, not whoah like Bonanza. I was still sitting with my legs spread out in front of me, but my back was braced against a tree trunk. Was this some sort of game, like those VR things?

I didn’t know. I was wearing some sort of cloth shirt, v-necked with rugged stitches made out of what felt like light brown muslin, but it was halfway down my legs with slits up the sides for, I guess, freedom of movement. Around my waist, over the shirt, was a woven cord, tied in the middle, with a sort of empty cloth pouch tucked into it. My legs were clad in a heavier, darker brown fabric, wool? Loosely woven, and a pair of Indian-style lace-up leather moccasins with the lacing tied around and up my calves.

The plastic bracer was still around my wrist, but it had changed and was now no wider than a watch band. Shoved into the other side of my belt was a knife of some brownish-gold metal with a wooden handle. It didn’t have a sheath, and was almost the size of my trusty KA-BAR, although it was sort of a rondel, with a foot-long double-edged blade made of… some sort of bronze? It had a solid six-inch square grip, a small hand guard, and a rounded pommel. Sharp edge, too.

It didn’t FEEL like VR to me. The fabric felt rough, and I could instantly tell that the pants or whatever were rough because I didn’t seem to be wearing any underclothes. Trees surrounded me, but they were not the kind of trees you found in VR, each of them was totally unique with their patterns of white and black bark, the way they twisted, and the way their roots penetrated the leaf-covered loamy earth floor.

Even the seat of my pants was slightly damp from sitting on the ground. I stood up quickly, expecting my head to hit the inside of that small room where I had been before, but no dice. I put my hand up and didn’t feel anything except for where the leaves brushed my arm as I stood. This place sounded like a lightly developed piece of the forest, with the quiet cacophony of insects, the wavering buzzing of cicadas, and the occasional chirping of birds with the soft coo of a pigeon.

And the leaves? I could see that each one was utterly unique. I could see the tracery of veins, the teardrop shape, and the slight yellowing around the edge of each leaf. Unless the computer that simulated this was the size of a planet it would be impossible for this to be VR. I had to assume that I was literally translocated to some other place in an instant, or that the room I had been in was the VR, and this was reality.

The smell! Even the smell was right. Earth, and the Beech trees that surrounded me, the undertone of rotting leaves, warm leaves, and even the dappled bits of sunlight coming through the foliage made me think of… Alabama, or maybe Georgia.

The last time I had walked through a forest like this was 15 years ago, back when I had a life. Back when I was on leave, had a wife, and wanted to start a family, before I got hit in the face with the realization that I would probably never be normal again.

Did I hold Kathleen’s realization that she didn’t want to be married to a dying cripple against her? No. I mean, at first, yes, I was stricken, but eventually, I realized that she still had a life ahead of her, and even with my family’s wealth and my service bonuses I would never be able to offer normal things or the hope of a family. She was almost eight years younger than I was, and trying to cling to her while I died would have been beyond selfish.

Yes, there had been some harsh words, but I had apologized to her. I got it, I really did, and when I felt like I was done, I had to set things straight first before I went to hell or wherever I was headed.

Of course, I hadn’t expected this. I felt… amazing. The headache had faded, and my body felt so strong. Really great! I didn’t even smell car exhaust or anything, which was hard to escape in 2040. Right now, though, it felt like there was something wrong with my brain. I wasn't sure what it was, but it felt a bit like being drunk without the wobbliness.

I suddenly jumped in the air, excited just to feel the sensation of my muscles working again, and snatched a tree branch that I pulled to the ground with my weight. I had to have jumped at least half my height! I could feel the twisted, papery park under my fingers, erupt in a shower of flinders as I let the branch go and saw bits of leaves and bark fly before settling on the ground.

I did a little dance, yeah, amusing, a grown man dancing like Woodstock as I circled around half-skipping, and finally stopped, feeling the breath heave from my lungs as I grinned. No one understands what healthy really feels like until it’s gone. I didn’t hurt, my joints didn’t ache, and I wasn’t attached to any machines!

I was lost someplace in the woods, and I had no idea where, but the fact was I was walking in the woods! I started trotting, and then running, my footfalls strangely quiet on the moist leaf detritus as I sprinted past the cleared areas between the trees, heading down a long, sun-dappled slope as I felt each foot, including the left one that had been gone for years, as my moccasins bashed rhythmically against the loamy earth.

I found the creek almost before I expected it, in the lee of an up-slope. My new body reacted perfectly, however, and I turned, following the slightly cutaway embankment that led to the rounded water-washed stones filling the creek itself. I caught a glimpse of a shimmering silver minnow, and the backward dash of a giant crayfish as long as a pencil as my shadow pushed past… at the very least, I knew where to find food and water if I couldn’t find civilization.

There was nothing else in the creek. No old tires, no signs of trails or boot-printed muddy paths, no cigarette butts or beer cans or even tangled-up abandoned fishing lures anywhere. That did not match the character of the parks I was familiar with and visited. I was likely a long way away from civilization.

My watch thing was flashing. Weird. I slowed down to catch my breath. I couldn’t see anything on it, just a slight subtle glow, pulsating, so I touched it.

In front of me, a box appeared! Like an actual hologram, floating in space in front of me, making me reassess this being reality and the other space being VR. It seemed to hover in front of the watch, but even when I moved my hand, it stayed hovering in front of me, feeling like it was about two feet in front of my face. It was completely transparent and contained glowing blue letters.

Welcome to the human-standard tutorial. This system is protected and restricted to tech level two, and the tutorial reflects this restriction.

Your traits are currently undefined. Your essence affinities are currently undefined, pending connection to a system-standard database.

You have displayed the trait of Survival!

Displayed the trait? What the hell did that mean? Because I noticed Crayfish and fresh water and started moving downstream on a creek? That wasn’t Bear Grylls stuff, that was the same common sense that every person who ever slept in a tent should have. If you are lost in the woods, you either stay where you are if you think rescuers might come, or you start moving towards civilization, which means you found water and followed it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I heard a scream! It sounded human, not like a screech owl or monkey, it sounded distinctly feminine, downstream and slightly to the right. I didn’t know what time of day it was, so I didn’t know if the sun was rising or setting, but most streams and rivers tended to trend southerly, so I assumed it was off to the west.

You know, common sense would dictate that where there is a scream, there is danger to avoid, but I was not emotionally or by training tilted that way. I crouched low, and switched to a ground-eating lope, dodging between the trees as I sought out the source. As I headed west of the creek, back uphill, I almost stumbled right into a road.

It was not a road like I was used to. It was narrow, almost too narrow for a single car. It was faced with gravel, and in very bad shape, like an old dirt road with two narrow ruts, but I spotted it in time, and if I had kept going up the hill instead of following the stream I would have stumbled across it. I stayed slightly off the road, continuing to head south. My clothes were not camouflaged, but they were nice earthy colors, so I stuck to the overgrowth and kept bushy plants and low-hanging branches between me and the road.

I smelled it before I saw it, a rich pungent wood-burning smell, and soon noted that there was an off-white column of smoke ahead of me further down the road. The scream had turned to breathy, half-screaming sobs and loud chattering. It sounded almost like one of the Congolese languages, but was incredibly harsh, with more of a South American pattern to the words, although it was definitely in a language I couldn’t understand.

I finally stopped and dropped, and noticed ahead of me something large, burning in the road. Around it were about a half dozen hopping…. Things. They had greenish-brown skin, and were about the height of children, if children were malformed, with giant doglike green ears, wore little but pieces of leather and raggedy pants, had giant eyes, and round heads bisected by enormous mouths. Those things were the source of the chatter, and there appeared to be two human bodies lying in the road.

The screams and sobbing were coming from an otherwise attractive young woman, with dark skin and long plated hair, who had her hands bound and was wearing very little, most of which was torn away while one of the little greens grimaced toothily behind her, his pants around his ankles. She was covered in long bleeding scratches, bent over so her bottom was in the air and her face ground into the dirty road by another one of the wretches, and had her eyes tightly closed while the wiry but muscular little man had his way with her.

Okay, I was no angel. In fact, by some standards, I might even be considered the monster that the Governor had called me. I had an evil side, and if those had been buddies of mine, I might have just wanted to take my own turn. No, I was not a hero, and I was not a paladin, but those… things, were not even human. So when I snuck through the trees, grabbed one of them by the throat, and carefully used my knife to snip his jugular and windpipe, it was out of rage and disgust, not a Robin Hood instinct.

They were raping a human woman, and they had to die.

It had been decades since I had used my training, decades since I had crouched in a jungle or snuck around in the dust around a village, taking out guards, but it turned out that my new, rebuilt body was even more effective than my old one. I felt none of the twinges in my knees I had grown used to before I finally mustered out, just a pure, almost holy feeling of righteous rage.

Two others were digging in the back of the wagon as it burned. One of them was dressed a little more elaborately, wearing some kind of wolf skull with a bird-skull-topped staff over his back as he picked his way through some kind of chest. Whatever he was, though, he was not knife-proof or particularly difficult to sneak up on, and a quick slide across his throat cut off both his ability to yell a warning and his blood flow.

Greenish they might have been but their blood was very red, as red as any human, but the next one, on the other side of the wagon, managed to get off a hint of a yelp before he was silenced permanently. The two who were busy with the girl, who looked like an early adult or late teenager, were still distracted by her.

The one on the side of the wagon, quickly jumping up to pull heavy bags out of the back before they burned, apparently heard me, and turned to catch a glimpse of me before I dived behind a bush. Dammit, I was hoping to take out at least four of them before I was spotted. If I’d had my rifle… well… I didn’t have it, and based on the primitive clothing that the woman, the corpses, and the green bastards were wearing, I might not get one any time soon.

He started howling and chattering, pointing in my direction, and I knew that the gig was up. There was no way they wouldn’t find me, the brush really wasn’t deep enough for that, so I charged, heading towards the little fellow that was withdrawing from the woman and trying to pull his trews and what looked like sloppy pieces of chain mail back into place.

If they had managed to kill whatever males were protecting her… Husband? Father? Brother? Her screams made a lot of sense. The creature hadn’t drawn any weapons yet, although I saw the one holding the girl starting to drag out what looked like a primitive stone ax, as I hit the little fellow with my knee in the gut, slamming my other foot onto his chest as he fell so I could drive my knee and my drawn knife downwards.

I felt… crackling under my knee as his rib cage gave way under my mass, and I almost felt guilty slaughtering these monstrous midgets mercilessly, but the creature under my knee exposed a gigantic mouthful of sharp, shark-like teeth as he coughed out chunks and blood under the blow. I noticed that my little watch was flashing, but I had nowhere near enough time to touch it again.

I felt something dig into my backside lightly and spun around with that crappy little knife, catching the one that had first spotted me, a spear stuck right in my ass from where he had apparently stabbed me, across the face diagonally, sharp little teeth flying as the 12” blade cut across its stubby nose, ripped and deflated an eye, and then dragged itself with a splash of gore from where the point caught the inside of his eye socket and ripped away a line from the socket out of the skull.

The last one, the one who had been holding the girl, screeched and started backing away, holding its ax in both hands. The ax itself was a piece of work, a chunk of stone tied to a split branch, and I might have laughed if I didn’t have just as scruffy a spear sticking out of my left buttock.

“Can you understand me?” I asked, loudly, as I stood next to the girl.

“Yes!” she sobbed. “Yes, I can… ”

I ignored her and watched the creature closely. It looked like a monster out of video games. A goblin? Gremlin? Something like that. It was looking around as I slid the gore-coated knife down the inside of the girl’s arm, keeping the edge away from her skin, but slashing through the vine ropes wrapped around her wrists. “Can you stand?”

She was crying but nodded.

I sighed, and said, “This is an emergency. There’s a spear sticking out of me. I need you to pull it out.” I glanced meaningfully at her still-rope-wrapped hands that should probably still be capable of grabbing the spear sticking out of ty tochis.

The goblin noticed I seemed a little distracted, and as the girl turned and tugged at the gnarled branch with a stone spear tip that seemed to be caught in the fabric of my pants, it started running. I didn’t want to let it go, but with a gluteous wound, chasing after him was more likely to get me bleeding, and unlikely to catch him. I heard wheezing coming from the one I kneed as the girl, still crying and sobbing, started backing away, holding the gnarled spear.

I looked at her, and looked at the dying goblin, and then glared, “Kill it.”

She looked like she was about to drop the spear. “What?”

I scowled, “Kill that fucking rapist monster. Kill it now.”

I noticed that the creature’s eyes were open as it stared at me, and then at the girl, but it couldn’t get out a word as she nodded, and started to look for someplace to put the spear.

“In the eye,” I stated. I had no idea how strong she was, but her body weight in the eye would kill anything, I think. With a nod, she seemed to harden her expression, and then took a step forward, using both hands to put the spearhead into the thing’s oversize eye.

It was a pretty horrible way to kill something, she was not particularly strong or fast and missed a couple of times, and when she finally got the spear into its frantically thrashing head, it started trying to wrench itself free as she bore down on its weight. It finally stopped moving after nearly thirty seconds of her pushing as hard as she could when I heard the sound of its orbital breaking and the spearhead dropped a few inches into its brain.

She took a step backward, letting go of the spear, and then looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. “Those goblins killed my husband and his brother.”

I nodded, “Do you feel better? You killed that thing. You felt it die under your hands. It deserved to die, and the only thing I would have done differently was make it take longer. Good job.”

She started to nod, and I was suddenly in a cave.