Rick and the others found themselves in a jumble of boulders just outside of Stonespire. They were in a clearing in the rocks about 20 yards in diameter. The peak of Stonespire rose over the edge of the natural wall of boulders all around the clearing. A fire burned in a stone ring at the center of the clearing. Scattered around were piles of crates, boxes, trunks, ragged tents, and unidentifiable equipment.

Slate waited alongside the team from the Mars expedition. The Rork hurried over as soon as they appeared, rubbing his lower hands together and grinning. He had large square teeth, only a shade lighter than his mottled orange and brown skin.

“Welcome, welcome! Good job getting the encampment. It's not much now but just wait until you see what we can do with it. Now we've got a lot of work to do so...”

Dr. Schneider followed the Rork across the clearing. “You! What's the meaning of all this? Where are we? How did we get here?”

The Rork eyed the human scientist sideways. “The first thing to do is make him your camp manager. I don't know if he's got the skills for it but at least it'll shut him up.”

“Shut me up?” Schneider’s tone was imperious. “Look here you. There’s no call for such hostility. I don't know what you're doing here but...”

The Rork waved the hand at the human dismissively and continued talking to Rick. “Just pull up your encampment interface and...”

Rick shook his head. “I don't have one of those.”

“Oh right, you're the boss around here.” The Martian turned to Gambit.

Gambit shook his head and crossed his arms. “No way. You're not roping me into that.”

An announcement popped up on Rick's interface.

[A change of leadership! The party leader has given you control of the party. You are now party leader. Check your menus for more information.]

The short four-armed Martian was momentarily taken aback. "What?" He glanced over at Gambit in apparent astonishment. "Why did you..." He looked to Rick. "Oh, never mind. Now you're the boss. That’s fine, that’s fine, just don’t go disbanding the party until you know what you’re doing, all right?”

“Got it,” Rick promised.

Slate focused his attention on Rick. "So now you need to pull up the encampment interface. It'll be under the party management menu."

Rick checked, and sure enough, Slate was right. Where before he only had the option of leaving the party, now there were dozens of options under several sub-menus. One of them was labeled [Encampment]. At Slate’s direction, he selected it. A map of the clearing appeared. Several points around the camp were highlighted with information boxes and various options for Rick to select. Just to the upper left of the fire ring was a selection for "Camp Manager." It was empty. When Rick selected that, a new list appeared. [Unassigned Retinue.]

"Yeah, I see the interface," he told the Rork, who was shifting energetically from one foot to the other.

“You’re going to need to assign a camp manager first thing,” Slate said.

"I demand to know what's going on," Dr. Schneider interjected. "You still haven't answered my question of how we got here. Or how we're going to get our goods to Red Rock." His tone changed when he said the last sentence.

The others all glanced at him, frowning or biting their lower lips. They all must have figured out something weird was going on. Rick wanted to get to the bottom of it, but he had more pressing matters, so he stayed focused on Slate and the menus.

"Are these selections permanent?" Rick asked. "Or can I change who's assigned to what at any time?"

"You can change them as long as all the slots are filled. You're going to need to gather more retinue once we get this place upgraded. Eventually there'll be more roles. But we can worry about that later. Do you see where to assign a Camp Manager?"

Rick nodded. "Yes, it gives me a list of everyone here.” He gestured towards the remains of the Mars Expedition.

"How many roles do you have available? You should have three for a first-level encampment but the System changes things up every time a new expansion is added, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to refresh my knowledge on the exact menu details."

Rick checked. In addition to Camp Manager, he had a slot for Forager, and another for a Smith. The last label was in the upper right on the map, by a pile of smithing equipment. Rick oriented himself and spotted a tiny forging setup he hadn’t noticed before. It was just a primitive anvil and a raised bowl full of what looked like charcoal, with a hammer and tongs leaning against the anvil.

There were five retinue and only three roles, so he would be able to change them around immediately.

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“Go on, start handing out assignments,” Slate urged.

Daniel had apparently gotten bored. He wandered off and started talking with one of the expedition members.

Rick selected Camp Manager again and picked Dr. Schneider for the job. A glow of yellow light enveloped the lower half of the man for an instant.

“What was that? I--” Schneider’s entire tone and attitude changed as the glow faded. “Welcome to camp. Good site you've picked here. We're busy getting set up, but do you need anything?"

His question sounded like a dialogue prompt, so Rick shook his head.

"No, thank you."

"Very good," said Dr. Schneider. He turned away and started shouting commands to the others, ordering them to move some crates. They all just stared at him in disbelief and then started to argue.

Slate clapped both sets of hands. "Good, good. Camp Manager is a very important role, but it doesn't require many skills to begin with. We'll want to look at the rest of your retinue and figure out who's best for the other roles. In the future, you'll want to select retinue for their skill set," he waved a dismissive hand towards the arguing crowd, “and not just because they're your species.”

"Now look.” Rick didn't like the Martian's dismissive attitude. "These are humans, aren't they? I mean, they're real people. Not just..." He stopped.

Not just what? They weren't non-player characters, like in games he was used to. These were non-combat players. But what did that actually mean? They had shown no interest in fighting. Was that because they couldn't? Were they all, bizarrely, a group of pacifists? He already knew they were incompetent at fighting, because they'd gotten killed as soon as they integrated into the system. But he didn't like the idea of the system manipulating their minds. Would it continue to do that now that they were assigned roles?

Based on Dr. Schneider’s behavior, it absolutely would.

“So how much freedom does a non-combat player actually have? Is the system just going to puppet them around like this? I don’t like that idea.”

Slate threw up two of his hands. “What difference does it make? They're a bunch of scrubs that couldn't get past the newbie zone.”

Gambit, who had been quietly watching Rick sort through his menus, shrugged. “He's got a point.”

Daniel came drifting back. “I agree with Rick. I was talking to Dr. Takashi and he was telling me about ancient Mars’s ecology, then he started going on about shipping Carthog Eggs to Red Rock, whatever those are, and how they need to be there by two weeks from tomorrow and were we their escort. I couldn’t break him out of it.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. They’re people. We can’t mess with their free will.”

Slate put two of his hands on his hips and threw the others in the air. “Free what? Look, even when you were meat, your free will was not much more than a bunch of chemical reactions. You could have left these guys as a bunch of quest props. How much free will did they have then? You've already given them the opportunity for a much better life by adding them to your retinue.”

Rick tried to think of something else to say in protest. "Look," the Martian said, "we don't have time for this. We've got a lot of work to do if we're going to get where we need to."

"What do you mean, get anywhere? It seems like you have a destination in mind," Daniel sounded confused. “Is it this Red Rocks place the guys are going on about?”

"I'm getting to that," the Rork said impatiently. "If you would just let me do my job. Do you have any idea how few parties come through here?"

Rick shrugged. "At least four recently." He greatly enjoyed Slate’s look of shock.

The Rork jerked in surprise. "Really?”

“Sure. There were two groups of five that came in with us yesterday sometime, but we don't know where they went. There's another group over by the spawning zone grinding right now."

For a moment, the Rork looked taken aback. Then he frowned. "Well, that's just fucking swell. I wait who knows how many million years and I almost miss it.” He shook his head. “Look, it doesn't matter if a party comes through, even if they make it past level five. It only matters if they actually go to the board and get a quest for a guide. Whoever else you're talking about didn't do that. Just you guys."

He looked between Gambit, Rick, and Daniel. His face took on a look of disgust, or at least that was the impression Rick got. It was hard to tell with the Martian's expressions. “And there’s only three of you. We’ll have to fix that. And we have to start getting you more gear. And this encampment’s going to need a lot of upgrades.”

Daniel crossed his arms. Clearly, he wasn’t impressed with the alien’s attitude. “You claim you’ve been here for millions of years. What’s the big hurry now?”

Slate rounded on him. "Didn't you hear the announcement? Oh wait -- when did you guys get here? Maybe you didn't."

"What announcement?" Rick asked. As bothered as he was by the retinue system, he was very interested in what the game guide had to say.

"The next expansion is Earth. They're opening up a connection in less than six months. It'll be a class two portal, so it's only going to take two transport tokens. But that's if you guys can level your encampment all the way to a caravan, and your hands on two tokens, which I have to say, I think I have a better chance of flying out of here."

There was a long silence while Rick and the team just gaped at the alien.

Daniel was the first to speak. "We can go back home?"

The Rork unfolded his arms and gaped at them for the second time in as many minutes.

"Back? You mean you monkeys are from Earth? What the hell did you come here for? Mars is dead. Mars has been dead since forever. Mars was dead back when it was alive. The whole game system here is a complete backwater. Only a handful of teams from Mars even made it into the galactic network. There hasn't been a viable team with a chance of pulling that off come through here in more years than I can count."

Rick's mind was whirling. It was too much to take in. "Wait, slow down. I need you to take this one step at a time. There's a galactic transportation network, and we can use it to get away from here."

The Martian nodded.

"And we can get to Earth?" Daniel asked.

Rick threw a glare at him, but he didn't notice and the Martian answered anyway. "Yes, you can get to Earth. Kind of."

Daniel immediately pounced. "What do you mean, kind of?"

"Well, it won't be the Earth you came from, unless the Earth you came from is an integrated reality simulation with a competitive progression overlay."

Daniel shook his head. "I don't know what any of that means.”

“If you came from a game world, then it'll be the same. Because when you go back, you'll still be in a game world."

Daniel's face crumpled. Rick felt a pang of disappointment himself, but it was faint. That surprised him a bit.

So they were stuck in a game world. But it was a game world that was potentially galaxy-spanning. He could live with that.

As long as he didn’t get turned into a non-combat player, because based on the way Dr. Schneider was wandering around the camp ordering everyone to set up boxes and find the supplies, that was a fate slightly worse than a 9-to-5.