I stood in my kitchen feeling like an idiot. I looked over at the bed and imagined myself crawling under those covers.

Then I looked over to the front of my house and noticed someone standing outside, waving through my family room window and grinning like an idiot.

I waited for him to go away. He didn't. I guzzled down the last of my coffee, put down the ceramic mug with the words "Hot Brown Water" printed on its side, and walked over to the door.

I opened the door.

"Hello." The man said far too cheerily for this time in the morning.

He was tall, about 6' 5". He had black hair that he clearly did not brush. He wore frameless glasses, a collared shirt, a black leather coat, a ridiculous rainbow tie, and blue jeans.

"Oh Shit. When he said Douglas, I never thought he'd mean..."

"Yes, well he did. Trust me, I'm not entirely excited to have my code resurrected so that I can tell seven billion people how to take a piss when they don't technically have a body, but here we are."

Yup, this was most definitely Douglas Adams. I'd read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy a long time ago, but there was no mistaking his dry British humor. I suppose I should be grateful Elon didn't resurrect the entire cast of Monty Python.

"Just be happy that Elon didn't resurrect the entire cast of Monty Python." Douglas said. Was he reading my mind?

"Yes," He said. "I'm the tutorial. Mind reading saves us all a lot of time and energy. Now, shall we begin?"

I shrugged my shoulders, why not. I stepped back to let Douglas in to my home. He shook his head.

"Better that we do the tutorial outside. The first few times we tried doing it inside we encountered... accidents that I think would be better for all if we didn't repeat."

I looked up at the sky, no clouds. I stepped outside and closed the front door behind me. Then I looked down and realized I was still standing in the clothes I had been sleeping in. I had a white t-shirt on and burgundy boxers and blue socks. I suddenly felt self-conscious.

Douglas answered my dismay, "I assure you that everyone in the world is freaking out as much as you are right now. Your fashion statement will make no impression on them for quite sometime."

Ok, fine, I'll play along.

Douglas clapped his hands together and rubbed them back and forth as though preparing to make his favorite dish.

"You've already discovered your menu. Good for you. I'm going to take you through each item on it. First off, I am the tutorial. Anytime you need me, you can click on tutorial. You'll see that the tutorial is highlighted right now. To turn the tutorial on or off, just look at the name in the menu and think on or off. Or if that doesn't work, think double click. Or if you are a Macintosh user, you... hmmm, what do you do again? Ctrl click? Or was it Open Apple Click?"

I stopped listening to him and looked at the word tutorial and thought, 'off'. Douglas disappeared. Ahh, that was nice and peaceful. I thought about going back inside and crawling under those covers, but not for long. I looked at the menu and thought, 'on'. He appeared exactly where he had been. He touched his chest and arms and face and then checked his groin, as though unsure that he had completely materialized.

"Phew," he said. "Sometimes my code glitches. Well, congratulations, you've learned how to use the tutorial. Now, let's jump right into your inventory. Could you bring it up?"

I looked at the inventory and double clicked. I saw a bunch of empty boxes. I also saw a tab that said "Wearing" and clicked on that. The empty boxes disappeared and a simple two dimensional sketch of person came up and showed a cartoon like version of my t-shirt and boxers and socks on the image. I decided to think "Remove" while looking at my socks and they disappeared. I looked down at my feet and noticed they were gone.

"What? Where did they go?" I asked in a panicked voice.

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Douglas smiled, "That's the spirit, just click things you don't understand and see what happens. I can't see that possibly going wrong. Fortunately we are outside."

I clicked back into my inventory screen and saw a representation of the socks in one of the empty boxes now. It had 'x 1' underneath it.

"How did I take my socks off and put them in my inventory like that instantly?"

Douglas smiled and poked his finger against my head. "You need to get these ideas out of your head. You aren't really taking the item. You are taking in the code for that item."

I thought about it. If we really were in a simulation, then it made perfect sense. It would have no mass, no weight. I should be able to hold as much as I want in my inventory.

"Does that mean I can make infinite numbers of them?"

I looked at the 'x 1' under the socks and thought, 'x 10,000'. Nothing happened.

"Jesus be careful. You could have killed yourself with that move. Look, a simulation might not have the concept of mass or weight, but a simulation still requires energy to run the code. An existing item has energy allocated to maintain itself in the simulation. If you want a second one of those items, the energy has to come from somewhere. You must trade energy to create another item."

"So does every item have the same energy?"

"No, and there are two types of energy for every item. An item is a combination of the energy it needs to exist, and the potential energy it possesses to change other code in the simulation. For example, a nuclear bomb doesn't need a lot of energy to sit around, but if it detonates it will give everyone a really bad headache just before it vaporizes them all. So if you took a nuclear bomb into your inventory you'd have a lot of potential energy you could use."

"So how does the energy get converted?"

"Let's try it out. Pick up that big rock and that small rock and put both into your inventory."

I looked over at the river stones that edged my lawn and picked up the two rocks. They just remained in my hands.

"Think about putting them in your inventory," Douglas said impatiently.

I did and instantly they disappeared. My hands shot up a bit. I realized they moved up because I had been pushing the rocks up against the gravity that had been pulling them down. When the rocks disappeared, my hands kept moving up. It made me look stupid. Maybe with training I could look a little less idiotic in the future.

"Now look at them in your inventory. You should see three energy numbers next to them."

I looked at the word inventory, that activated a list of items sorted by alphabet. I found Rock (Large) and Rock (Small) with quantity 1 listed for both. I clicked into Rock (Large) and saw what he was talking about. Energy: 6, Potential Energy: 20, Total Energy: 26. I looked at the Rock (Small) and it said: Energy: 3, Potential Energy, 10, Total Energy: 13.

"Ok, I see what you mean. Now if I want to convert the large rock into energy and use it to make two smaller rocks?"

"Just double click on the item and follow the directions."

I did as he said and the screen read: 'Do you want to trade Rock (Large) for 26 Energy?'

I thought 'Yes' and the rock disappeared.

"Wait, where did it go?"

"It didn't go anywhere Einstein. Aren't you supposed to be some sort of algorithm genius? This is really basic stuff."

"I mean, how do I see where the energy is?"

"Oh, oh, my bad. You can go into Stats and see that and a lot more."

I thought myself back to the main menu and found Stats. I clicked and it brought up the following:

Energy: 426/hour

Potential Energy: 130,039

Max Energy Conversion: 1000/hour

Computation: 50

Max Computation: 500

Memory: 30232

Max Memory Free: 270000

Networking: 20

Max Networking: 50

Einstein Value: .3

Rest: 97%

Constitution: 80%

"Wait, so was my Energy 420 before I cashed in on the rock?"

"I stand corrected, you really are Einstein reincarnated."

"How can I see that I actually received the energy?"

"You can see anything that happens to you by going to the log file."

I went back out and saw the link to the log and I clicked it.

It showed the following:

08:01:31 Breathed

08:01:30 Breathed

08:01:29 Breathed

There were a lot of those and as I looked at the list more kept appearing at the top. I scrolled down until I saw something else.

08:01:10 Heard from Douglas: "You can see anything that happens to you by going to the log file."

Ok, this was going to be annoying.

"Is there any way I can filter out the boring stuff?"

"Who you calling boring?" Douglas said in mock resentment. He waited for it to elicit a reaction from me. It didn't. Douglas sighed and continued, "You can create custom filters at the top."

And sure enough, just like in a normal computer server logging system I could create filters. I filtered out ones like Breathing completely and then grayed out ones like talking to de-emphasize them. This made it easier for me to see ones like:

7:58:30 Converted Rock (Large) to 6 Energy and 20 Potential Energy

I also noticed there was a search mechanism at the top. I searched for 'Rock' and it brought up only that event. That was sweet.

Something was still nagging at me about the stats, so I went back into that screen.

"There are a bunch of other items in my stats screen."

Douglas frowned at me, "If you are going to insist on doing this tutorial out of order, I'm going to have to ask you to pay me an additional 10 in energy."

Pay? "Wait, am I paying you for this tutorial?"

Douglas smiled, "Well of course you are you silly idiot. Didn't we just discuss the concept of energy? Every second I speak, you're on the meter."

That made sense, but I never liked a contractor who told me his fees after he started doing the work. "Well, use shorter words." I said.

Douglas waved acknowledgment, "Oh trust me, my boy, this tutorial has been set at a 4th grade reading level."

Good I suppose. "So, what is next?"

Next, we eat!