I opened the door and watched Douglas walking down the street. About four houses down to the left of my mailbox I noticed a person standing on their front lawn, talking to thin air. I caught up to Douglas, who stood waiting for me a few feet from the woman.

"Who is she talking to?" I whispered.

"To me." Douglas whispered back.

The woman walked over to where we were standing. I'd seen her before but I had never actually met her. She was just shy of my height, Asian features but I couldn't exactly place which country her ancestors might hail from. She did not smile at me.

"So, do you also have a crazy old white guy talking to you?" she asked.

"Yup." I responded.

"Just so you know, this crazy old white guy is now synchronized between you both. I will appear in the same spot and say the same thing to you both. So you don't have to repeat what I say to the other."

She looked at Douglas in a way that said, "I don't expect much from you." I immediately liked her.

"I'm James," I said.

"I'm Sara," she responded.

"So, did Elon Musk show up in your bedroom too?" I asked.

"Who's Elon Musk?" Sara asked.

"Um, Douglas, am I the only one who saw Elon Musk?" I asked him.

"No, no, she saw him too."

"Oh, is that his name?" Sara said with mild interest.

That confused me. "Wait, you weren't curious enough to find the name of the person who appeared in your bedroom?"

Sara waved her had, "Oh, that's not the first time I woke up to find a weirdo who snuck into my room to watch me sleep. Although, the fact that it was Elon Musk answers a question that was bothering me about that experience."

"Wait, what did he do?" I asked, somewhat worried to hear the answer.

"The last time someone stalked me they stole a pair of my underwear. I guess Elon just isn't into that sort of thing."

Silence hung over us. We both looked at Douglas at the same time with an expression of "Now what?"

"Right. I'm going to show you both how to trade with each other. First, go into your menu and select 'Network'."

I saw that Network was no longer grayed out. I clicked on it. Two options showed up.

People I've Met

People I'm Connected To

I selected People I'm Connected To, but no one showed up.

"Wait, why am I not connected to anyone? I know plenty of people."

Douglas waggled his finger at me, "Always jumping ahead. Well, here is the short answer. You know how Facebook makes both people agree to share their data with each other? Well, there you go. Now go to 'People I've Met' and what do you see?"

Sara chimed in, "I see 'James' at the top of my list."

I did the same and saw 'Sara'. I clicked on her name and it asked me if I wanted to Network with her. I said yes.

"That was rather forward of you, I mean I just met you." Sara said, a little twinkle in her eyes.

"What did it say?" I asked, worried.

"It said you want to sleep with me. Do I accept?" Sara said.

"Wait, no, I didn't..."

Sara frowned and turned angry, "Why not, are you saying I am ugly?"

I looked to Douglas for help. Thankfully he jumped in. "It did not say that. It said, 'James would like to add you to his Network, Accept or Reject.'"

The tension left my body. I saw a notification, 'Sara has accepted your Network request.' Then I went back to 'People I'm Connected To' and I saw Sara listed there.

Douglas continued, "Great, now when you click an item in your inventory you will have the option to trade. Trading will bring up a screen where you can add items and request the other person offer something in exchange. Usually two people would talk all of this through first and then use the trading system to make the exchange."

"Why can't I just physically hand it to her?" I asked.

Sara looked at Douglas, incredulous. "Wait, didn't you tell him that turning the item back into a real object takes energy? Why would someone want to spend any energy on a trade?"

"I most certainly did tell him that." Douglas said.

They both looked at me, as though expecting an apology for wasting their time.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Ok, I get it, dumb question. You don't have to be an ass about it."

Sara looked over at Douglas, "He is a delicate flower, huh?"

Douglas nodded.

I wanted to change the subject, "So is there anything else we can trade?"

Douglas' left eyebrow went up. "As a matter of fact there is. It's time that we explored our Skills tab."

Douglas had removed the gray from the Skills link. I clicked on it.

Notable Skills:

Algorithms: 35

Puzzles: 24

Mathematics: 20

Sarcasm: 14

Reading Comprehension: 10

Drawing Pictures of Breasts: 5

Other Skills:

Driving: 2

Peeing While Standing: 1

Walking and Chewing Gum: 1

83249 more...

God I hoped Sara couldn't see this list. Drawing Pictures of Breasts? Maybe I could distract from her noticing. "Sarcasm level 14?" I asked and emitted a pathetic fake laugh at the same time.

"You too?" Sara sounded a bit fake too. I wonder what skills she had that could embarrass her...

I noticed when I clicked on Sarcasm it gave me a definition. "Sarcasm: You have the ability to put other's at ease or to really piss them off. You won't know which affect you will have on them until you use this mostly useless skill."

I also saw the trade button under the definition. I clicked on it, chose the number 1, and then selected Sara.

'You have offered 1 Sarcasm to Sara.'

She smiled at me and did something. A counter trade of Sarcasm came up on my screen.

'Sara modifies your offer. Sara is offering to trade 7 Sarcasm for 7 Sarcasm.''

That made no sense, we both had level 14 sarcasm. "I don't get it, why is it allowing her to make an offer of the same thing?"

Douglas had materialized a chair and sat down in it. "There is a lot to unpack in that question. First, let's make sure we understand exactly what a skill even is. A skill is a combination of knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge. That means it requires a certain amount of memory and processing. You will be limited on how far you can take skills based on your overall memory and processing limitations. The combination of how much of the skill code you have, and how effective you are at processing it, creates that score. That means that two people can have the same score in the same skill, but totally different data sets. The reason it offered you the ability to trade only seven of the fourteen is that the other seven you both already possess."

"How can we possess exactly the same code? We didn't grow up in the same place or have the same experiences." I snapped with a bit too much confidence.

Douglas leaned forward and waved his hands dismissively, "It's a fuzzy matching system, it approximates similarities. And by the way, have either of you ever heard the term Oppan Gangnam Style."

Sara lit up at this, "Oh yes, I remember that!"

That wasn't an accomplishment. "Of course, like a billion people saw that Youtube video."

Sara looked at me and stuck out her tongue.

Douglas ignored us, "Well, those billion people have that horrid video and song stored in their code."

No way. "You are telling me that some sort of superpower capable of building this entire simulation believe storing that video in one billion code bases is a valuable use of resources?"

Douglas lit a pipe with a match and took a puff, "Yup." Why did he have a pipe?

He continued, "You see that section that says other skills?"

I nodded.

"Search for 'Oppan Gangnam Style'"

I did. And there it was.

Oppan Gangam Style Dance: 1

Sara spoke up, "Mine says Oppan Gangam Style Dance level 2."

I looked at my number again, embarrassed. "Yeah, mine does too. How funny." Time to change the subject. "Why are some skills listed as Notable and others as... others."

Thankfully Douglas didn't rat me out. "Only skills that are at least one standard deviation over the norm show up as notable. Most skills will never leave your other bucket. For instance, you'll never be a level 40 in Walking and Chewing gum. There is only so far that skill can be taken."

"So what happens if we trade skills that one person is really good at, but the other is not?" I asked.

A request appeared in my notifications:

Sara would like to trade 7 algorithms for her 3 negotiation.

Yes, no, counter offer.

"Wait, how did you know I had Algorithms?" I asked, suspicious.

Sara smiled. "If you click on a networked person's name it will show you a bunch of stuff about them."

I froze. She smiled even wider. "I would have offered to trade you for your amazing talent drawing women's breasts, but I just couldn't think of anything in my skills that would be worthy of that trade."

God damn you Elon Musk. God damn you and your little Douglas Adams tutorial too.

I clicked on Sara and read.

Sara Tanaka

27 Years Old

Skills:

Negotiation: 27

Finance: 22

Fencing: 19

Sarcasm: 14

Biking: 7

67399 other skills...

"Hey, you are a level 27 on Negotiation, why are you only offering me 3?"

She smiled and touched my arm, "James, negotiating is a far more useful skill, especially now that the world is about to be turned upside down. Plus, you have more of your skill to share."

I looked at her with suspicion. And then I softened. Either way I got to see how this all worked. I clicked accept.

And I immediately regretted it.

The instant my Negotiation skill rose to a 3 I understood that I should have at least made a counter offer. And as I thought about her reasons they didn't make nearly as much sense as before I made the trade. Still, how cool was that. I had just instantly learned a skill. I smiled.

"More!"

"Woah there cowboy." Douglas' chair and pipe vanished and he stood up now. "We still need to review the Jobs, Logs, Lab, Chat and Settings. Now, you two can either go back to your homes and review them separately or we can finish these together."

I had already learned a bit about Logs, but Sara must not have yet. Still... I looked at Sara, "I prefer to learn together, in case you ask something I hadn't thought to ask."

Sara looked at me and then shrugged, "Fine."

I continued on her behalf, "That would be great James, I bet you will also have questions that I would have forgot to ask."

Sara looked at me as though I was crazy. I put my hands up in a gesture of 'what?'

"Let's open up the chat function."

I did. There was only one person on my list, Sara. She had a flower next to her name.

"Why is there a flower next to her name?" I asked.

Douglas exhaled, "Since Elon designed the interface, he got to choose how it looked and worked. The flower was something he used in an old instant messenger during the early days of the Internet. If the flower is colored in, the person is free. If the flower is transparent, it means they are either asleep or don't want to talk to you."

I noticed that Sara's flower turned transparent for me. I looked over at her. She was most definitely not asleep.

"Hey!" I said. She shuffled her feet and let her eyes met mine as though she was unaware anything had changed. I looked at the interface and saw that I could change my own status to Away. Then I sent a message to Sara to see if it would still go through when the other person had set themselves to away.

"Hey!" she said, "I do not need a shower."

Well, that answered my question. Chat messages still worked when the person was away.

I was curious about something, "So how far away can two people be and still chat."

Douglas answered cheerily, "No idea. Fortunately you are both code and are never far away from each other. You could each be on the opposite pole and your code wouldn't need to change position."

Of course. All of this made sense, I just couldn't get out of my head the concept of distance, weight, gravity, any of it.

"On to Logs. James, we already reviewed logs, so I'll just talk to Sara." Douglas vanished.