Jeri sat at the little desk in the corner of her hotel room wearing pajamas that consisted of sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt that read: Come for the breasts. Stay for the brains. The only noise was the gurgle of the little in-room coffee maker drooling into a paper cup and the rhythmic pattering of her avatar’s feet racing through a dense forest of ancient trees while on auto run.

The clock read 5:45 when her avatar reached the Chimera Tavern, built in a lonely section of forest cleared of trees, where stumps had been lazily left behind. The stumps were a telltale sign that the Tavern had, at least originally, been a player-built establishment. NPCs were programmed to clear stumps and fill in holes. The rickety one-story public house with quad dormers looked like a cross between a dive bar and the log cabin on a syrup label. The roof had a dusting of snow, as did the ground and the pine trees around it. Realms of Rah ran on half-scale time—for every one day in the real world, two passed in-game—so the two worlds were rarely in sync with each other. While it might be the heat of summer on earth, winter was coming in the Forest of Dim.

Jeri’s avatar paused on the porch.

Inside the hotel room, the coffee maker had stopped gurgling. Jeri crossed the room to add cream and sugar to the pale-gray dishwater that bore as much resemblance to coffee as the movie I, Robot did to Asimov’s book. Feeling chilled, she adjusted the room’s thermostat. Outside, a faint dawn competed with the parking lot’s floodlights for the right to illuminate the world.

She sent a text to Ajit, asking him to tell Zach to log out. She didn’t want to talk to her lead programmer or Zach for that matter. When Ajit texted “Done,” she sat back down at the computer, sipped from the coffee cup in one hand and entered the tavern by right-clicking on the door with the other.

The sound of the door creaking played through her tinny laptop speakers as a room lit by the warm glow of a fireplace and three candle-filled chandeliers was revealed. Two NPCs sat at a table in the middle of the room, playing checkers. The one on the left was Dashion the Huntsman, a gimpy one-time hunter who gave out a series of low-level quests: gathering wood for the fire, killing an elusive but nonaggressive stag, and then a more challenging quest to eliminate an aggressive bear. Upon finishing those, a final quest for Dashion’s bow was granted, sending the player deep in the forest to a cave filled with spiders. When the gamer went there, he or she could find broken remnants of the weapon. Returning them to Dashion, he’d fixed the bow’s broken string and give the player a “+10 to hit” weapon, explaining that he was too old to use the bow anymore.

Across from Dashion was Edgar Sawtail, whose only purpose was to play checkers with Dashion. Neither NPC ever left the tavern. They didn’t even get up to stretch or eat. These were two of the lobotomized inhabitants who had caused some of the most talented game developers in the industry to leave DysanSoft.

Realms of Rah, presently in its fourth year and fifth expansion, was unlike its predecessors, such as the once popular Everquest, World of Warcraft, Control Point, and Elan Online. RoR reached for the Holy Grail of MMORPGs—a living world. Seven years of development had resulted in the creation of an autonomous simulated ecosystem. Chaos-based weather patterns eroded landscapes, while winds dispersed seeds from mature plants. The seeds could sprout if they landed on good soil. Herbivores ate plants; carnivores ate herbivores.

The alpha version of the game was just the framework, a natural world with no intelligent life. Wind could snap trees, and lightning could spark fires. Rivers could be rerouted or made into lakes if something dammed them. What’s more, all changes were just as permanent or as transient as in the real world. If animals weren’t killed, they died of old age or sickness. A random drought could devastate plants, kill weaker root systems, and allow new species to dominate.

After the ecosystem was in place, Jeri’s team introduced humanoids: men, dwarves, elves, and goblins. A handful of other beings were dropped in with the first expansion. Although they appeared to be typical computer-controlled non-player characters (NPCs), they weren’t. All of them were endowed by their creators with the best artificial intelligence the developers could dream up. Just as the creatures imitated the behavior of living animals, the races simulated human beings, with their own needs and motivations. Each programmer tried to outdo the others, and it was interesting to see characters acting on what they saw fit. None of the programmers was exactly sure what would happen once their creations were released into the virtual world, but they had great hopes.

At first things went well. The races lived in caves, hunting and gathering to survive, but the developers wanted more. The code was designed so that the characters would learn from observation and would experiment by combining random existing ideas to create new concepts. This aspect was less successful. Since multiple possibilities were attempted, some truly bizarre developments occurred. For instance, there were mass deaths as characters tumbled off cliffs or drowned while attempting to swim across an ocean. The team remedied this fatal disregard for common sense by adding restrictions to the Free Choice Code. Nevertheless, by the time the beta was opened to a limited public, none of the NPC population had advanced past the Stone Age. The virtual characters had tried thousands of random actions, but none had resulted in building a structure or discovering how to utilize fire.

Everything changed once Realms of Rah opened its doors to live players. Exposed to real people who knew enough to make tools, dig minerals, and start fires, the NPCs learned by observation and imitation. Their world evolved quickly after that. Language and technology advanced at a blistering pace, with one notable exception. Writing didn’t exist. DysanSoft, still anchored to traditional game concepts, desperately wanted a written language to facilitate quests and stories. Much to the programmers’ frustration, the computer-generated inhabitants of Rah never developed this skill. Six months before version 1.0 was set to release, the development team was forced to hardcode the written language into the game and fudge everything related to it. NPCs still couldn’t read, and their vocabulary was limited to a set number of prerecorded scripts.

Out of random chance, similarities to the real world cropped up—as when the inhabitants of a large, powerful kingdom decided to build a tower to find God. This completely random event made headlines around the world, sparking arguments between philosophers, scientists, and religious groups. There were calls for Realms of Rah to be shut down. Ironically, the uproar actually boosted subscriptions by putting the game on the world’s radar. More and more NPCs joined the effort to find God, until players were unable to locate the necessary vendors and resources they needed and began to file complaint tickets. Fearing the game was spinning out of control like a poorly balanced washing machine, corporate ordered the developers to intervene.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

This time, instead of allowing them to fix the problem by inserting a Common Sense Code tweak, corporate forced the developers to lobotomize their creations, drastically reducing NPC freedom. This huge step backward launched a civil war inside DysanSoft. Rah programmers, who felt the integrity of the project was being destroyed by “suits,” quit en masse. Only three of the original developers stayed: Samuel Mendelburg, Ajit Banerjee, and Jeri Blainey.

With the game closed to all players, those two mindless characters were the only ones in the tavern besides Troth. He was in corner near the fireplace, looking like he normally would with four notable exceptions: his helmet was on the floor, the rawhide at his tunic’s collar had been untied and pulled loose, his weapon wasn’t in his hands, and he sat in a chair rather than standing at attention.

Troth was a goblin, huge and green—a member of the Ozak tribe formerly of the Ankor Mountains. Mountain goblins were bigger than forest, swamp, or plain goblins, and Troth was one of the largest. He had to be. Troth was a guard to King Zog, the ruler of the Ankor Goblin horde, and designed to be intimidating. Dark-green skin, which was almost black, covered exaggerated muscles. He had a neck as wide as his bald head, a lantern-jaw formed into a natural-state frown, and small eyes that had watched her intently since the door opened. Troth’s battle-ax leaned against the wall to the right of the hearth—in easy reach.

Jeri wasn’t worried. She was running a default first-level character without gear but in god-mode, immune from harm.

“Hail, Troth,” her character said when she targeted him and pressed the H key.

“Hello.” His voice was a preprogrammed gravelly growl, but there was a hint of apprehension. His little eyes narrowed as well. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

Both of Jeri’s eyebrows rose. “Whoa—they weren’t kidding about you, were they?” she said to her computer screen.

Lacking a decent microphone, she typed, “My name is Havalar. A friend told me about you. Said you were here.” Her in-game voice spoke the words.

“Who is this friend?”

“Ozerath.” Zach had played the same human wizard since starting at DysanSoft, so there was no doubt about the name.

Troth looked less suspicious but more inquisitive. He leaned forward, placing his massive arms on the table. “What did he tell you about me?”

“He said you were a very interesting fellow, and I should talk with you.”

“About what?”

Jeri decided to stay in character, for a while at least. “Ozerath wasn’t specific, but that’s the way with wizards, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. Have a seat.” He kicked out the chair opposite him. It skidded back with the sound effect Jeri had picked out three years earlier when the sound pack was upgraded. “You came a long way. You must be tired.”

This surprised her. “How do you know how far I came?”

“You’re elven. The elven lands are a long way off.”

His reasoning skills were impressive, but she didn’t have all day. “What are you doing here, Troth?” she asked, taking the seat.

“Sitting.” He glanced over at Dashion and Edgar and added, “I would have ordered a drink and something to eat, but those two never stop playing that game. I’ve watched them for hours. The thing is, they make the same moves over and over. I’ve tried talking to them, but the one insists I go chop wood because he has a bad back, and the other doesn’t say anything except uninspired insults.”

Uninspired insults? Jeri had programmed Troth herself and his vocabulary did not include the word uninspired. Troth had learned that himself.

“This is a tavern,” he continued, “but I haven’t seen anyone working here. Odd, don’t you think?” He gestured at the hearth. “Look at this fire. It’s been burning nonstop since I arrived. No one has added wood, but the flames haven’t diminished. Don’t you find that strange?”

“No. But that’s not important. I’m curious. Why did you leave Eridia and come here?”

Troth raised an eyebrow. “Who are you really?”

Jeri took her hands off the keyboard for a moment. She had an eerie sense that Troth was looking through the screen at her—at the real her. “I told you; I’m Havalar.”

“Let me rephrase,” Troth said. “What are you?”

“An elf—you were right about that. I’m an elven enchantress.”

Troth nodded. “And have you come to make me forget what I’ve discovered?”

What he’s discovered?

She considered asking what that was, but instead decided on, “What makes you think that?”

“A while ago, there were a bunch of people here, everyone asking questions, everyone curious, and then they vanished all at once. That can be quite disconcerting. Don’t you think? Since then, the only one around has been Ozerath—and now he’s gone and here you are. I think I did something wrong, something unexpected. I’m supposed to be like them.” He pointed at the checker players. “Like I used to be. Day after day, season after season, I guarded a door, and then I left.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Well, it was pretty boring for one thing. But mostly, it stopped making sense. A lot of things didn’t add up, like the fire and the checkers players. Some things adhere to rules, others don’t, but even the rules aren’t logical. Everything seems so arbitrary. Why should the sun come up every day? Why do I have to eat? Why do things fall when I let go?” He paused to look out the window at the snow. “Why is there anything at all?”

She could see why Ajit was impressed. Troth had managed to utilize his Random Combination Code on questions and was mimicking real life inquiries to a spooky degree. But it was just like the tower the NPCs tried to build, which was just like the lemming cliff-jumping—just random accidents that gave the illusion of independent thought. That’s what the game was supposed to do. What she saw was an NPC that had evolved into what the original design team had always hoped for—a real-life mimic. Somehow his character had been overlooked during the great purge of intelligence, when DysanSoft made a corporate decision to get out of the innovation business. They wanted robotic quest givers, not inhabitants that appeared to be able to think.

“Nice talking with you, Troth.”

In her hotel room, she stood in preparation to logging out.

“Are you going back to your world now?”

“What?” She paused.

“You enter this world from somewhere else, don’t you? This”—he pointed at her avatar—“isn’t you at all, is it? You’re probably not even an elf. Maybe not even female. This is just a game for you, isn’t it?”

Jeri stared at the screen, stunned. She didn’t reply. Instead, she reached for the coffee and knocked it over, spilling the beige liquid across the desk. She pulled tissues from a box to sop it up.

Troth stood, moved toward her, and waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she replied. She misspelled the three letters and had to backspace. Her hands, she discovered, were shaking a bit.

This is real. It has to be. Either that or I’m still sleeping.

“What’s it like where you are?” he asked, sounding not at all like the muscle-bound mountain goblin he was modeled to be. “Are you still in your reality? Or this one?”

“What makes you think there’s more than one reality?” she asked.

“Lots of things. Like I can’t remember being born. I know what happened yesterday, and the day before that. I can keep going back, but I don’t remember being born or how I got here. And what about death? Everyone dies. But why are we born, if we’re just going to die? It makes no sense.”

Jeri felt chills. She’d asked herself similar questions, most recently during her father’s funeral, who’d past a year before. She hadn’t considered the “being born” thing, but now that she thought of it, why couldn’t anyone remember that? Everyone just accepted the fact, but why? Brain not developed enough? Was that it, or—

“And where did everything come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? And why this something?”

“You’re a very philosophical goblin.”

“Am I even a goblin? I don’t know.” Troth looked down at himself and his left hand slid along the skin of his right forearm. “Is this all I am? Or is there a part of me that is more than this?”

The Valkyries began riding again, and Jeri nearly fell out of her chair. She crawled across the bed and saw Meriwether’s name and grinning photo on her phone. She answered it knowing what he would ask, but having no idea what she would answer.