Falling, falling is all I felt at first. The wind rushing past my body, past my face felt as if I was an angel descending from heaven, losing my grace, becoming one with the elements. The wind was so intense I thought I had the stroke of bad luck to be kissed by a hurricane, or thrown into the soul of a tornado. I was afraid to open my eyes, for fear the god of wind would take my sight as payment for looking into his kingdom. It might of been because I knew the ground was coming to embrace me and I just didn’t want my last sight to be some shitty looking rocks before I went splat.

“Well, shit. This is the first thing that happens once I get in the game? Oh boy don’t I just love respawns.” I said, mentally.

“No, I just wanted to give you a ‘skyline’ view. You’ll be slowing down.” A new voice said.

Those little machines must have done more than just studied my body. It’s given me schizophrenia as a bonus, that just makes live grand.

“No you aren’t crazy, yes I am real, enough and you don’t have schizophrenia, as far as I’m seeing.” the disembodied voice read my mind.

As I continued my descent to a glorious and most likely painful death I was exposed to a birds eye view of everything. If my heart, mind and soul could have stopped at the moment it would have. The twin suns, yes I said twin, were rising above the horizon, lighting the ground below it ablaze with it’s everlasting image. Passing through the atmosphere, I now felt not just the wind, but the warmth covering my exposed body like gentle embrace.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” asked the voice.

“Yes, it’s just so, so real. I am feeling everything at once.” I replied.

As I looked back down towards the ground, our meeting looked like it was coming much sooner than I wanted, so I did what anyone else in this situation would do. I closed my eyes and screamed like a little girl, hoping my screams would cause gravity to feel guilty and have pity on my poor body.

“Relax and enjoy the ride. I’m not going to let you die, you got arrived, that would be entirely too rude, and it wouldn’t give me the chance to introduce myself and talk about my favorite subject, which is me.” the voice said.

“Oh great so aside of going crazy, I’m having mercy set upon me by my own mind? That’s just a fresh load is bullshit.” I said, rolling my eyes.

As promised, once the ground became a little too close for comfort I rapidly slowed down until I was floating above the ground like a handsome, male Marry Poppins. Catching my breath I needed to slow down before I passed out as I was getting my bearings.

“See I told you I wouldn’t let you die.” the voice said.

“Yeah, thanks for that, it would have been terrible to go through all that just to respawn god knows where.” I replied.

I felt something on my right side, like a person but just out of reach of my vision.

“What you’re feeling right now is me, I will display a body for you so that you’ll feel better with communicating with me.” the voice said, as he appeared slowly from thin air.

“Hello, my name is Alpha, I’m your A.I. It’s nice to meet you Ryan Soluto.” Alpha said, smiling.

“An A.I huh? What do I need an A.I for?” I questioned.

“Well for starters, do you know where you are? What you’re supposed to do? How to interact with the game? Find your friend Dimitri? If so I’d love to know.” Alpha said, smiling.

He had a point, with his help I didn’t kiss the ground, also, I was 100% clueless on what to do, and how do anything. Looking down at myself, all I had on was a cloth, no armor, no weapon, no well, anything actually. What gives? I thought games would give you something to start at least.

“You got me there, I’m quite...under-prepared for well, everything it seems.” I said, looking at my almost naked body.

“Of course you are...Let’s start at the very beginning and hopefully you’ll catch up or die, it all depends on how strong you are.” Alpha said condescendingly.

“Okay, all mighty one, let’s see exactly what you’ve been tasked to show me.” I said, giving a mocking bow.

At this point as serious as he looked, he also looked quite amused, like a adult glaring down at a clueless child heading into the real world for the first time.

“First, this world moves as fast as your mind can comprehend and your muscles can respond to those thoughts. For example go ahead and think inventory and see what happens.” Alpha dared.

Doing as he said, I thought inventory and before I mentally finished pronouncing the word, an inventory window popped up in the middle of my vision. It was jarring to say the least, my vision was filled with an empty grey grid with sections, tabs, and something that looked like a specialities area, whatever that meant.

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“Well that was quite quicker then I had thought! It looks like your synapses connections aren’t half bad.” Alpha said, pleased.

“Connections? Do you mean mental thought commands? Those happen in other games as well.” I replied.

“Yes, but think about it, how much easier was it to pull up the inventory just now, compared to other games where you aren’t even fully integrated or have proper mental control of your surroundings or utilities?” Alpha pushed.

He was onto something. I didn’t really even have to think about an inventory, just the simple phrase brought it right in front of me, but that also presented a problem.

“That’s great and all, but if I’m in the middle of a fight and this thing pops up in front of my face, I might be stabbed through, burned, or something worse like listen to country music, until I died.” I said, worried.

“Stop being so dramatic, you can ‘think’ the window smaller. Remember, in this world knowledge and know-how is power, yes those shitty 90’s posters were right all along.” Alpha said.

So as I continued to stare at the inventory window in front of my face, it gradually became smaller and maneuvered to the bottom of my eyesight. It was much easier and smoother than in other games, it just was well...natural for lack of a better term.

“There you go, and yes before you ask, I can view everything you observe. It is part of having an A.I. Now let's move onto our next lessons.” Alpha said, in a teaching form.

The world slightly shifted, as if I was moving a thousand miles an hour and I was standing still. I was rapidly displaced from a desert landscape to a tropical climate and based on the raindrops falling I could feel plaiting my head, it was the rain season. Moments after our arrival I began to shiver along with take in my surroundings.

“We will only be here for a moment, but I wanted you to see what you’ll actually go through. I protected you from the weather conditions so far because I wanted this to be your first experience in the realism of this world. This is a game yes, however your experiences here will be anything but such.” Alpha said, with finality.

“I...I...I understand, can we please go now?” I shakily asked.

Alpha nodded and we were off once again to somewhere that looked like a savannah, an open plain straight out of the Lion King movies. The first thing I noticed once the world stopped spinning was the heat. I could feel my skin tightening, could see heat waves rising from the ground, and began to feel my body’s tenacity break down.

“I just wanted you to have another example of the impact each environment will have on you. It’s cruel I know but you need to know this and much more to help you not only survive here but thrive. I will of course be with you every step of the way but I cannot and will not babysit you.” Alpha stated.

“Who do you think I am? You think just because you’ve warped me around this what world whatever it’s called.”

“Paradose Dolore”

“What, para, something. Let me tell you, I’m one of the best gamers, not just in the United States, but in the world. I don’t break easy, never have so don’t give me that ‘babysit’ bullshit, I’m made of steel, not tin, asshole.” I stood defiant.

“Well ‘gamer’ how about you show me your combat skills, since you’re so full of vigor.” Alpha said, pointing to what seemed to look like a small fox.

I’m sure as hell not one to be made fun of, or out matched, so of course I was a man about it. I went over there and squared’ up with that little animal. At my approach it went on high alert, and looked at me quizzically. I bent down to give it a right cross, until I greatly unestimated it’s speed and it clawed at my cheek. The pain, well, the pain was everything I’d expect real life to be, unfiltered, unaltered, and extremely intense. I stepped back, grasped my face, and cried out.

“What the hell was that! That shit hurts like hell, this is a damn game.” I said, blood seeping through my hand.

“The longer you keep spouting stupid stuff like that, the shorter your continued lifespan will be. You’ll keep getting killed, most likely in a painful fashion, while asking yourself, ‘why me?’” Alpha responded.

I took a pause at this. Was this really a game? The pain in my cheek is as real as the sunlight on my face feels. This wasn’t some illusion or a mind trick, but was I actually experiencing this? The longer I thought about it, the more confused I felt. To hell with this, I want to go beat that fox ass, i'll deal with the details later on.

“Fine, i’ll play your game for right now, i'll see you in a moment after the fox and I have a conversation.” I said, picking up a branch from the grass.

The branch glowed for a quick second as I guess I ‘equipped’ it, and then it felt like an extension of myself, while I walked over to the sleepy fox with the smile of a grim reaper on my face. The fox heard me coming from a mile away, and instead of running, it’s previous victory made it confident, as it was up and ready in a blink of an eye, waiting to take another chunk out of me.

“Round two, little bitch, I’ve got something special for you.” I said, killing intent in my eyes.

I took a swipe at the fox, but being as it was so much smaller than me, I missed by miles. The fox darted in and out of my vision, taking swipes at my legs, and biting at my arm when my lunge was too slow. I was tiring far too quickly for my own good, and the hits kept coming. As the fight went on for a good two minutes I decided to feign stumbling and using my left hand I swung across my body to hit the fox on the head as it was ready to bite my outstretched right elbow.

The crunch of the fox’s head was quite audible and made me cringe a little inside. Once the branch impacted it’s head all life had left it’s body almost immediately and the fox fell limp. If it wasn’t a little bastard I would have felt pity, but my aching body felt differently about it. Still in a battle trace, I heard a slow ‘golf clap’ coming from behind me. Turning around, I saw Alpha, now confusingly in a 3 piece suit, slowing with a stupid ass smirk on his face.

“Good job, you look pissed off but at least you took 2 minutes less than I thought you would. This brings us to a couple very important parts of the experience: Combat aspects, Stats allocation, and environmental conditions.” Alpha said, listing everything on his fingers.

“As you could personally see, the fighting here, is just like any real situation, it hurts. There is real pain, not filtered, certainly not heightened, just genuine. You are in a ‘actual’ fight. You have to think about your next move, their next move and if you are within a party, everyone’s cooperation, roles, counter attacks, and everything else you didn’t think you would ever think of.” Alpha explained.

I sat there still recovering, but wondering for that 1000th time, what I had gotten myself into. This was like the sims, mixed with Dante’s Inferno, sprinkled with D&D, dripped in a pool of ‘wtf’. I really thought I’d slide through this game with no issues and poof a year would be gone just like that, I’m come out with a assload of money and continue along my way. I haven’t been here, more than what? A couple hours at most and I’ve already had my ass kicked by a fox, taken to three climates, been told I’m stupid by my A.I more times than I’d like to count and am now getting schooled at how I’m not taking this ‘real life’ seriously enough. Let’s go back to that part where I asked myself, what have I gotten into.

“I hope you’re keeping up because we’ve just gotten started. The next thing you need to do is to open up your status window, and we’ll go from there,” Alpha said.

Just as the inventory, I thought about it and the window popped up, however I made it shrink in size and slightly transparent in order not to completely block my vision.

“Ah, you’re learning, good.” Alpha said, honestly, proud.

“Yes, I do have a brain, even if it’s a little rattled right now. Before we continue, is there anything we can do about these cuts, bleeding, bruises, etc?” I asked, clearly in pain.

Alpha looked like he was going to decline, but took pity on me, snapped his fingers and all my aches, pains, and bleeding was gone.

“Wow….That’s, great!” I exclaimed,

“Yeah, it’s because we are within the development territory that I can do this, it won’t happen after we are done here.” Alpha said.

“Oh, so we are in the tutorial zone? I couldn’t even tell….” I said, embarrassed.

“Of course we are...That’s good you couldn’t tell, because besides these healing and dying structions, there isn’t anything different between here and anywhere else.” Alpha said.