Of all the animals that Sarah might have expected to be universal, horses were not one of them. To be fair, outside of her favourite stories – which were, of course, fiction - she had never taken the time to actively consider the potential composition of alien animals. She doubted many people had.

Well, there were probably some scientists who had. And certain types of science-minded people in general. And science-fiction authors. And…okay, so maybe a few people had considered such things, but Sarah wasn’t one of them.

She also hadn’t seriously considered how she and the Cantorian family would get to town for the promised market day. She had sort of assumed they would walk, but now that she saw the growing collection of goods to be taken along, she was doubting that assumption.

There was a small assortment of goods collected from the flora and fauna of the forest’s fringes, including a very familiar-looking red-orange pelt and set of black, curly horns, but the majority of the trade goods were eggs from the [Raptor Birds].

Sarah had known all those baskets full of eggs were down there in the root cellar – she’d packed many of them herself – but seeing them tidily tucked into shelves in the cool, dim light of the cellar was one thing. Seeing them all laid out side by side on the front lawn was another thing entirely. It really brought home the truth: there were a lot of eggs. She could have counted them all, but that would take far too long. Fortunately, this math was simple enough for even Sarah to do.

The average [Raptor Hen] laid a clutch of four eggs per day, though she wasn’t sure why. They were bigger than chickens, but that should have just meant they laid larger eggs than chickens. Instead they laid smaller eggs, and more of them. Fortunately, Sarah had zero interest in xenobiology and could happily drop this strange little bit of trivia into the “it’s alien” category and move on.

Anyway, if the average [Raptor Hen] laid four eggs per day, and the farm had thirty [Raptor Hens], five of which were currently dealing with the challenges of motherhood, that left twenty-five hens actively laying eggs on any one day. Twenty-five hens, times four eggs per hen, equaled one hundred eggs per day.

Now, between meals cooked and baked goods baked, Sarah and the family typically ate a dozen eggs a day, so that meant there were eighty-eight eggs left over for market. Eighty-eight eggs per day, times ten days since the last market day, equaled eight-hundred-and-eighty eggs, packed in wicker baskets, cushioned and insulated with clean straw, twenty eggs to a basket. There were forty-four baskets, and Sarah estimated she could fit only three, maybe four of them into her [Dimensional Storage] at its current level.

All this to say that when the farmer returned from one of the farm’s far pastures astride the broad, bare back of an enormous horse, with a second, equally large horse trotting along beside in lockstep with its partner, Sarah was deeply relieved.

There was a wagon beside the barn, but only now that she’d seen the horses did Sarah make the obvious connection. She was suddenly very glad she’d not voiced her concerns about the logistics of carrying all those eggs to town. That would have been embarrassing.

As the farmer led the horses into the barn, Sarah was about to start carrying the baskets of eggs and bags and crates of forest goods to the wagon, but Young One stopped her, explaining that his father would bring the wagon closer to the house once the horses were hitched. Thus, left at loose ends for the moment, Sarah wandered down to the barn to observe the arcane procedure known as “harnessing the team”, and began her mental ruminations on the universality of horses.

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He-who-shall-ride-the-future-as-a-bird-rides-the-wind stared at the slowly passing scenery and grinned. Everything he saw, and heard, and smelled, and felt was exactly as it should be. From the green grass in the fields, to the squeaking and jingling of the horses’ harness, from the scents of damp earth and new growth carried by the morning breeze, to the slight vibration and occasional bumps of the wagon beneath him as it rolled along the hard-packed road, all was as it had been every other time his family had made the trip to town on market day, barring changes in weather and season, of course.

Everything was normal and ordinary and that was amazing because none of it save his father and his sister was real. This wasn’t actually their wagon, and they weren’t actually travelling down the road to town…they were in one of the Builders’ simulations, one that was even more realistic than any other simulation he’d ever experienced.

Even the initial Tutorial for this new System had been similar to the educational simulations they sometimes experienced at school, which were fairly realistic but always just a little bit fake. The teachers said it was so they wouldn’t confuse the simulated world with the real world. He’d never before understood why that might be an issue, but now he could see it.

This was just…this was…what was that word Miss Sarah had taught them? Oh yes. This was just so cool! Builder Work in general was cool, because they were the Builders, but this was even more cool because it was so real, even though it wasn’t.

Still grinning, he turned his gaze to the front of the wagon, where his father sat upon the bench seat and drove the team. His strong back was straight and his broad shoulders were relaxed, rather than squared, but had lost much of the slump that had been there since Mother died. Both of the long leather reins were grasped loosely in Father’s left hand, which rested on his knee; the horses were well-trained and familiar with the route, so little guidance was needed at the moment. Father’s right arm was wrapped around the shoulders of the little girl who sat with him on the bench, and who leaned close to his side for comfort.

He-who-shall-ride-the-future-as-a-bird-rides-the-wind felt his smile slip from his lips as he stared at his sister’s small back. She still hadn’t gotten over it, and he didn’t quite understand why. They’d both felt the connection with the simulated human; at times it had almost felt like life before Mother died, but this human woman, real or not, wasn’t Mother – the young boy had enough memories of his mother for the differences between the two women to be obvious.

Perhaps that was his sister’s problem; perhaps she, being several years younger and therefore having fewer memories of their mother, only remembered things like the warmth of her smile, or the comfort of her hugs…things that Miss Sarah was able to replicate to an astonishing degree.

The boy wasn’t accustomed to thinking such deep thoughts – he preferred action and adventure to self-reflection and “philosophizing”, as his father called it – but for the well-being of his little sister, he was willing to do most anything. He remembered now, as he pondered, that Sister had a habit of sitting on the rug before the fireplace for hours on end, staring up at the family portrait on the mantelpiece. She’d confided in him once that without the painting, she didn’t think she could have remembered what their mother had looked like.

Yes, he could understand how Sister had soaked up the joy that Miss Sarah brought to their lives and latched on to the woman as some sort of partial surrogate for the mother they’d lost. If he were honest with himself, he’d done the same thing, to a small degree at least, but what he couldn’t understand was why his sister was still so upset about Miss Sarah not being a real person.

They’d known from the beginning that none of the humans they might encounter in this place would be real people. This was just for practice, so that when the humans finally arrived on their world there would be some communities who already had a bit of an understanding of the new race, and who could help the refugees integrate into their new home. That was how Father had explained it.

And while Miss Sarah was fun, and wonderful, and amazingly realistic, Sister and he knew from the start that the time they spent with her, and the things they did and said, it was all make-believe, playacting, practice. It was like that thing they sometimes did in school. He furrowed his brow, trying to remember what Teacher had called it. Oh yes, role playing. They pretended it was real, but it wasn’t, and they all knew it.

So when Miss Sarah suddenly stopped paying attention to them the other day, he and Sister had both recognized the signs of one of the Builders’ artificial people. They went off to play while the Builders fixed whatever error had occurred with Miss Sarah.

Well, he’d gone off to play. Sister had gone off to cry. Somehow she’d started to think of Miss Sarah as a real person, so the sudden reminder that she wasn’t had hit the little girl hard. He understood that. He’d made the same mistake when he was her age, with one of his first teachers. What he didn’t understand, again, was why she still hadn’t gotten over it.

He sighed and turned his eyes away from the wagon’s seat. He’d done his best to be a supportive older brother but it wasn’t enough. He would just have to trust Father to know how to help Sister.

If Mother were here…no. He shoved that pain back into its box and let his previous grin return to his face. The sun was shining, the day was warm, and he planned to get a new Skill today, though he hadn’t yet decided which one.

He turned his gaze to the human woman with whom he and the produce shared the wagon bed and his grin deepened. Ooh, she had that look again; she was thinking more of her weird thoughts. Maybe he could get her to share?

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Sarah surfaced from her thoughts with a jolt as a small finger poked her side.

“What weird thing are you thinking about now, Miss Sarah?” the boy asked, his innocent tone not at all matching his mischievous grin.

Sarah blushed, and then frowned at him in mock outrage.

“Young man,” she said with a theatrical huff, “I don’t think about ‘weird things’.”

He giggled. “Yes you do.”

“Yeah, I guess I do,” she said with a sigh.

“So…” the boy prompted.

“Huh?”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Oh, right. Uh, I was thinking about horses.”

The boy’s face fell.

“Horses aren’t weird,” he muttered in disappointment.

Now it was Sarah’s turn to chuckle. She reached out and fondly ruffled the boy’s downy locks, easily overcoming his half-hearted attempts to evade her.

“You’re right,” she said, “horses aren’t weird. What is weird is that your horses look almost identical to the horses we had on Earth.”

The boy perked up. “Really?”

Sarah nodded. From the corner of her eye she saw the farmer’s posture shift, though when she turned to look, both he and his daughter were still facing forward. Nonetheless, she could tell that he was listening with interest, and possibly Little One was too, so she pitched her voice to be audible for everyone in the wagon.

“I lived in a city all my life, remember, so I only saw a real, live horse about,” she bit her lip in thought, “uh, twice, I think. Everything else I know about horses I got from books and, uh, other types of records.”

Sarah suddenly saw her slight preface ballooning into a dense monologue as she realized she didn’t know the Cantorian word for “internet”, but considering what she’d seen of their technology so far, she suspected there was no such word, unless they had access to some kind of Builder-made internet equivalent. She was just getting herself properly wound up, trying to figure out how to explain the World Wide Web to aliens when the boy’s voice cut into her swirling thoughts.

“Why wouldn’t you see horses in the city?” he asked, his eyes squinted in confusion. “What did you use to pull your wagons?”

Ah. Ok, forget explaining the internet, let’s start with something simpler. She gave herself a quick mental smack for even considering dumping such a lengthy monologue on the boy. How to keep this from getting too confusing or complicated? Um…

“Our, uh, wagons, which we called automobiles, had something called an engine, so they could move without being pulled by anything.”

She used the English words ‘automobiles’ and ‘engine’ of course, but as she said them she felt a slight ping from her [Language] Skill, suggesting there were comparable terms in Cantorian. Huh.

Guess there’s more to this civilization than meets the eye, she thought. And indeed, the boy mulled over her short explanation for only a few moments before accepting it and moving on. He must have seen something similar of Builder-make, she decided, only briefly getting lost in the possibilities before the boy’s voice once again brought her back on track.

“You said our horses are almost identical to yours. That means something is different, right? What is it?”

Sarah met the boy’s wide-eyed gaze of avid curiosity with amusement. She could tell him Earth horses had two heads and he’d probably believe her, but that would be mean. She glanced past the father and daughter on the wagon bench to the two horses trotting lazily along in lockstep.

Sarah – like many girls she knew – had gone through a phase in her youth when she’d been obsessed with ‘ponies’. She’d devoured every book on the subject she could find in the local library, and had been greatly disappointed to discover that keeping a pet equine in the backyard of the average urban home was an untenable proposition. With no hope of ever having a horse of her own, Sarah hadn’t bothered to study any further on such things as the care and use of horses, but she considered herself to be at least minimally well-educated in the basics of horse breeds, including which ones were the prettiest ponies.

These two alien horses looked like someone had taken several characteristics of the Arabian breed – the arch of the neck, the pep in the step, the general grace of movement – and blended it with the massive build and fluid power of a Clydesdale, or perhaps a Percheron. They were a beautiful and magnificent pair of animals; tall, long, and broad, with heavily muscled bodies, hooves the size of dinner plates, and luxuriously thick manes and tails. Their bodies were primarily a single colour, while their manes, tails, and a sprinkling of spots on their rumps were all a second colour, and therein lay the oddity.

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“White was a really common hair colour on Earth, for all sorts of animals, and even some people, especially when we got old,” she explained. “The other one though, uh, I don’t know your word for it and I can only do part of a literal translation…um…what’s the Cantorian word for a really big body of water, like thousands of times bigger than a lake?

“Ocean.”

Sarah consulted her Skills, both [Polyglot] and [Language: Cantorian].

“Hmm, no, not quite what I need. What’s the word for, uh, a smaller ocean?”

“Sea?”

“Yes. We call that colour ‘sea-foam green’, and it is most certainly not a natural hair colour on Earth, not for horses at least.” Sarah sat back, satisfied at her successful communication.

The boy stared at her. “That’s it?”

“What?”

His voice slowly rose in both volume and pitch.

“They’re a different colour? That’s it?”

“Well, I mean, there are different breeds of horses, and their colours, shapes, and sizes varied a bit, and these ones look like a mix between two Earth breeds, but…yeah? I did say they were almost identical.”

The boy let out a huff, folded his arms, and glared at the passing scenery. He muttered something too quietly for Sarah to catch.

“What was that?” she asked.

“That’s not weird,” he repeated a little louder, refusing to look at her as he said it.

Sarah was at a loss. What was she supposed to say to that? She glanced at the wagon bench, hoping for guidance, and saw the farmer’s shoulders shaking. That set her off and she started chuckling.

Young One whipped his head around to stare at her, his face the picture of offended dignity. Sarah laughed harder.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped between guffaws, “if my alien thoughts, about comparing my alien world to yours, aren’t weird enough for you.”

The farmer was chuckling openly now, and even Little One was giggling at her brother. The boy blushed and dropped his aggrieved posture. He dipped his head in apology to her and Sarah grinned and let him know she’d taken no offence.

When the laughter finally died down, the boy shot her a hopeful glance. “Have you been thinking about anything else lately, Miss Sarah? Maybe…maybe something weirder than horses?”

Sarah glanced at the boy, and then looked up at the wagon bench, where Little One’s posture had relaxed for the first time all morning. This was it. She took a deep breath.

“Well, there is something I’ve been wanting to speak with your sister about.”

Little One’s back went as stiff and straight as a new fence post. Sarah sighed.

“Farmer,” she called over the clopping of the horses’ hooves, “would you be willing to stop the wagon for a few minutes, please?”

The man turned to look at her, then glanced down at his daughter and back at Sarah, his face troubled, but then he nodded and brought the team to a halt. He carefully swung his right leg over the bench and sat sideways, facing his daughter, now able to keep an eye on both the wagon and the horses at the same time.

“Little One, will you look at me, please?” Sarah asked gently.

The girl reluctantly turned around on the seat but refused to meet Sarah’s eyes.

Sarah sighed. Good enough.

“I feel like you’re angry with me, Little One. You’ve been treating me very differently for almost two days now. Did I do or say something that hurt you?”

The little girl clenched her tiny red-brown hands together in her lap but didn’t speak or raise her eyes. Finally, her brother answered for her.

“You’re not real,” he told Sarah quietly, then he tilted his head to indicate his sister, “but I think she wanted you to be.”

Sarah blinked, long and slow, as if the action might reboot her brain. Did that mean…?

“But I am real,” she said.

Little One’s head snapped up and she glared at Sarah, her jade-green eyes wide with fury and wet with tears.

“No, you’re not!” the girl shouted, and one of the horses flinched at the sudden noise, though they were both too well-trained to react further. “You’re not real! The Builders told us so.”

“Yeah, well, they told me the same thing about you,” Sarah snapped back, forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be the adult in this conversation. She quickly reined in her emotions and calmly met the child’s blazing eyes. “Did they lie about that too? Are you real?”

“Of course we’re real,” Young One started to say.

“But you’re not,” his sister cut in, “and I can prove it!”

Sarah raised her eyebrows in bewilderment and shot the farmer a questioning look. He gave a tiny shake of his head, clearly just as shocked and confused as she. The little girl faced them both down with a look of defiance. Her father opened his mouth but then turned away as both horses started snorting and stomping their hooves.

The farmer looked quickly around and saw nothing concerning or dangerous that might have caused such a reaction from his team, so with a light touch of pressure on the reins and some firm but soothing words he calmed the animals, suspecting it had been nothing more than some opportunistic biting insects. Satisfied that all was once again well with his team, the farmer turned back to his passengers.

“Alright, Daughter,” he said, “why don’t you explain?”

“I might be just a kid,” the child replied defiantly, looking at her father instead of Sarah, “but I know what it looks like when the Builders’ people-machines get confused. They stare at nothing and just sit there and twitch. We sometimes make it happen to the Builder-made teachers when…” the girl’s eyes widened and voice trailed off as she realized her emotions had led her to say more than intended. “…when we want a break from class,” she finished quietly.

Her brother hunched his shoulders defensively and both children turned a wary gaze to their father. The man sighed quietly, and though his face remained quite stern, Sarah thought she glimpsed a very slight twinkle in his eyes. She wondered if he had first-hand experience of such shenanigans from his own youth.

“We will discuss your treatment of your teachers later,” he promised his clearly repentant offspring, though Sarah wasn’t sure they regretted their actions so much as having those actions revealed; either way, the children nodded sombrely, accepting the promise of discipline without complaint.

“Now,” the farmer continued, turning back to his daughter. “I, too, am experienced with the Builders’ people-machines, though perhaps not quite as much as you.”

Both children flushed in embarrassment and ducked their heads in a repeated apology, which prevented them from noticing the quickly suppressed smile that flashed across their father’s face.

Sarah fought back her own smile.

“Daughter,” the farmer said, reaching out and gently raising the little girl’s chin until her tearful eyes met his own. There was no more anger in her gaze, it had burned itself out. All that remained was grief, and a bitter disappointment so deep it brought a lump to Sarah’s throat.

The last shred of doubt regarding the reality of the people around her fled Sarah’s mind. She was still confused, for she didn’t understand why the Builders had set up such a charade, but she no longer believed the virtual avatars before her held the minds of anything but real, flesh-and-blood people. She was willing to accept the proposition that advanced artificial intelligence could effectively mimic a lot of emotional responses, but the grief she saw in this tiny alien child was far too raw – far too real – to have been produced by any machine, even one of Builder-make.

“Ah, Daughter,” the farmer said again, his voice cracking with the pain of a father bearing witness to the suffering of his child. He gently wiped away his little girl’s tears with a calloused thumb.

“Child, listen to me. The Builders' machines, your teachers among them, have never claimed to be real people, not even once. You know this, yes?”

The girl nodded.

“Then why would you doubt Miss Sarah when she says she is as real as we? Have you not noticed that everything she says and does is so much richer, so much more, than any of the machines have ever been?”

The girl nodded slowly and turned her conflicted gaze to Sarah. “But the other day,” she said softly, “on the lawn; we were having so much fun and then you stopped. You didn’t see us or hear us; you didn’t even react when Brother poked you.”

The boy in question flushed a bit at that but didn’t interrupt his sister.

“You were just sitting there,” the little girl continued plaintively. “You kept twitching, but never because of anything we did. And your eyes were moving, but you never looked at us. You were just like our teacher when…” The girl stopped speaking; knowing the rest of the sentence didn’t need to be said.

All three Cantorians turned to Sarah for an explanation. She blew out a breath. Those darn Builders, she thought, messing with people’s lives like this. It wasn’t right, but there was nothing Sarah could do but resolve the situation before her and hope no further harm came from it.

“I am a real human,” she began, “but in a way, Little One, you were partly right about what happened on the lawn. One of the Builders’ machines was confused – or, as we would say in English, glitching – but that machine wasn’t me, it was the System.”

The Cantorians all blinked in surprise.

“The System?” Young One said in confusion. “How could the System, uh, glitch?”

From the way he said the new English word, Sarah could tell it would quickly become part of his regular vocabulary. She held back a chuckle at his linguistic appetite and shrugged. “It’s a machine, like any other. Isn’t it?”

The farmer shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It is not unknown for the Builders’ more simple workings to…” he paused and tried out the new word, “…to glitch, but the System is one of their grand workings, and those never glitch.”

The children nodded in agreement, Little One’s eyes still heavy with suspicion but now harbouring a little spark of hope.

Sarah briefly pondered her response, first setting aside a split second to marvel at the idea that anthropomorphic artificially-intelligent androids capable of serving as teachers for classrooms full of children were considered “simple workings”. As for why the System might not meet the same high standard of quality as the Builders’ other “grand workings” (whatever those might be)…

“Yeah, that might be partly our fault,” she said, briefly knuckling her forehead in an unconscious gesture of sheepishness.

Young One’s forehead and nose both scrunched in confusion and his father cocked a questioning eyebrow.

“How could an error in a grand working of the Builders, assuming such an error even exists, be the responsibility of a human?”

There was a strong undertone of disapproval in the man’s words, as if Sarah had claimed credit for something sacred and far beyond her station. She supposed that might have been exactly how her words were received by a people whose technology was primitive, even by the standards of Earth, and who had been living under the aegis of the Builders for who knew how many generations. It made sense, but the man’s disapproval still stung.

Sarah swallowed her instinctive emotional response, knowing a show of indignation would do her no good here. In the back of her mind she could feel the bond of Meat and Mead stretching, and she knew this misunderstanding could not be left to fester or everything she had build with the farmer’s family would turn to ash.

“Not me, personally,” she finally said. “My people. Humanity.”

The farmer gave a tiny nod, accepting her correction, but he said nothing, waiting for her to answer his question. The children looked anxiously back and forth between the two adults, and the hint of distrust blooming in the farmer’s eyes felt like a punch to the gut, but Sarah took in and released a slow breath and forged onward.

“Did the Builders tell you where they got the idea for the System?”

The farmer shook his head. “They told us only that a new species would be joining us on Sanctuary; that the new race, the Humans, had a population greater than all the races of our world combined; and that your people had achieved a level of industry, technology, and scientific understanding greater than any other Sanctuary race save the Elves.

“They said the System was created to ensure all parties could integrate with each other on equal footing; that no culture or people might be subsumed by any other.”

“That’s all they told you?” Sarah asked, incredulously.

He nodded.

Sarah sighed. They said we’d get credit, she nitpicked, before silencing the petulant thought. Not helpful.

“They got the idea from us,” she said quietly. “We had thousands, perhaps millions, of stories of imaginary worlds, each with its own magical System. Every author approached the genre with new ideas, and no two of their Systems were ever exactly alike.

“What’s more, almost all of those imagined Systems existed in worlds in which magic was real.”

“Your people believe in magic?”

Sarah shook her head with a slight smile. “No, well, maybe a few did, but in general, no. Supernatural power, the power of God, or gods, of angels and demons, that’s a whole other ball of wax…”

A hint of confusion flickered across the farmer’s face and Sarah realized the English idiom hadn’t translated very well but she didn’t stop to explain.

“…but for the most part we all agreed that magic, as a secular concept, as an element or force of nature, wasn’t a real thing; however, we really enjoyed imagining that it was real.”

She paused; remembering those first moments after the world had ended.

“When the Builders told us, or told me, at least, that they’d created a System based on our fictional stories…”

“Wait,” the farmer help up a hand. “The Builders actually told you this?”

Sarah opened her mouth to respond and stopped. She’d never actually spoken with any of the Builders, she’d only received messages. She also had no way of definitively knowing, or proving, if anything said in those messages was true or false.

“The last memory I have of my world,” she finally said, “is of being engulfed in white light. To the best of my knowledge, I have spent every waking moment since then in virtual reality of some form or another.

“Everything I have learned since that last memory has been from you, the System, or text-based messages claiming to be from the Builders. It was one of those messages that stated the Builders had created the System based on the inspiration of our stories. If those messages really did come from the Builders – and I have no reason to believe otherwise – then yes, the Builders did tell me this.”

“You will swear an oath on this?”

Sarah hesitated for a moment. Oaths had never been a big part of her life. She knew that people swore oaths of honour and service when joining the military, or the police force, or when taking on certain roles in government. And then there was the oath to tell the truth when testifying in a court of law. None of those seemed appropriate now.

She could have sworn an oath by the Queen, no, it was the King now, of Canada, but she doubted that would hold any weight with alien people from an alien world, and she doubted they would have any idea what the Bible was so that was out too. She supposed she could explain that it was the holy text of her religion, but she didn’t know how much importance they might place on such a thing. The Cantorians might consider the Builders to be akin to gods (she’d yet to see sufficient evidence either way) but she most certainly did not and she wasn’t about to swear an oath by them. Perhaps there was a middle ground.

“I swear on Meat and Mead that I speak the truth,” she said. “May the bond break if my words be false.”

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the uncaring whispers of nature and the swish of the horses’ tails as they fanned themselves for flies. The bond remained, and the stretching sensation that Sarah had felt earlier faded away. The disapproval in the farmer’s eyes also faded, leaving only confusion and curiosity.

“As I was saying,” Sarah went on, “when the Builders told me they’d created their System based on our stories, I was excited. I thought maybe magic was real after all and we just hadn’t discovered it.” She made a little face.

“I’ve since come to the conclusion that magic is not real and the Builders are using their technology to mimic it, possibly for our sakes, possibly because they just thought it was a cool idea.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes, indicating her inability to comprehend the thought processes of the Builders.

“So, think about it,” she summarized, counting off her points on her fingers. “The Builders made this System based on imaginary worlds dreamed up by the convoluted minds of humans; are using technology to pretend that magic is real; figured out how to make the System work for both the various peoples of the Sanctuary Worlds and for humans, a species of which they presumably knew little or nothing before all this; and did it all in what I am assuming – based on the aforementioned messages – was a shorter time frame than what might usually be dedicated to such a project.” She took a breath.

“Isn’t it possible that even the Builders might not get it perfect on the first try?”

The farmer nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose it is possible,” he said, “but I’m not…”

Sarah cut him off with a raised hand, dipping her chin as she did so in a silent apology for the rudeness. “Look, we can discuss the specifics of all this another time – along with questions like, ‘Why did the Builders tell both sides the other wasn’t real?’ – but for now I think we have something more important to deal with.”

She glanced at both children, then back at their father. He followed her gaze and his expression cleared.

“Right,” he said. “We – our family and everyone in town – are real people. The Builders connected our minds to this artificial place to help us learn how to help humans integrate into our society.

“And you…you also are a real person?”

“I am. The messages I got from the Builders said that they were, ah, caring for the bodies of all my people as they transport us to your worlds, and that they connected our minds to this simulation to give us a chance to learn how the System works before we arrive.”

Sarah turned to Little One. The young girl had followed the conversation with confusion, and then growing comprehension. Her eyes now sparkled with hope. Sarah gave her a grin.

“Since we’re both real that means neither of us will disappear when this Tutorial ends. It also means we can be proper friends. Would you like that?”

She barely finished her question before the little girl launched herself down from the wagon bench and into Sarah’s arms. There were no more words said. None were needed.

The farmer beamed at the sight of his daughter’s joy and faced forward once more. He clicked his tongue at the horses and began humming a happy little tune as the team leaned into the harness and the wagon started off toward town once more.

The children soon began chatting about all the things they wanted to show Sarah once they got to town, and Sarah happily engaged them, though she couldn’t help looking around in confusion now and then…she was getting some very strange feedback from [Keen Eye].