I opened my eyes some time later, darkness having consumed the world outside my window. With no idea how long I was out, I pulled up the interface for my implant to check the time.

I'd only been asleep an hour and a half, by some miracle. That meant I hadn't wasted the night, and since Harry had gone to such great lengths to tout the time dilation functions of the UNDR system, I’d have plenty of time to get a head start on my investigation.

I opened the Quick Start tile and went through the setup procedure. Harry appeared to have done much of the configuration for me. I could see boxes checked to randomize my avatar’s appearance and user ID with each login, to turn off the broadcasting of my user information and to privatize my profile.

All that I had left was to choose my username, class, and first ability.

I let the system randomly generate my user ID, deciding it was pointless to create something that would be changed every time I logged in anyway. Part of me wanted to have a badass name, but the rest of me trusted Harry’s desire to keep me safe. The system read my name off in a cultured British accent.

“User ID...Quixotic_Supernova1”

Damn. That was a mouthful. Before the system had even finished generating the rest of my profile, I resolved to have everyone call me Q.

I'd played plenty of RPGs, back before writing overtook my life, so the next screen was familiar to me. A window, showing a list of seven blank character stat fields filled my view, each of the empty squares followed by a -ROLL- button to their right. Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Luck were all familiar to me, but the others were new. Resilience, Street Cred, and Aptitude filled out the seven.

Of the RPGs I had played in the past, usually there was a Constitution, Charisma and Wisdom skills, but apparently UNDR was going to be a little different. Street Cred was probably a stand in for Charisma, the standard indicator of attractiveness and how you were perceived by others. In the same vein, Resilience was probably similar to Constitution. Aptitude and Wisdom didn't quite mesh the way the other two did, but since UNDR was supposed to be a futuristic cyberpunk world, it made sense that Wisdom, which traditionally came from learning from your mistakes, would be replaced with a new ability that indicated how likely you were to not make any. In modern society, nobody really cared about experience, they just cared if you could do what they needed you to do. Careers were elusive things nowadays, so wisdom was in short supply. There was always a younger, cheaper replacement waiting in the lobby for you to make a mistake, and with the razor-thin margin of error brought on by 40% unemployment, most people were never allowed to learn from their mistakes.

Artificial intelligence had taken most of the jobs in the world, and in the ones that remained, their precedent of perfection made for a plenty hostile work environment.

I pressed the -ROLL- buttons in quick succession, not even bothering to see the results. This wasn't a game that I'd be spending much time in, so I didn't think the stats I carried would matter much.

Strength:12

Intelligence:14

Dexterity:16

Resilience:9

Luck:12

Street Cred:7

Aptitude:18

I only had a basic understanding of what each of these stats stood for, and zero idea how they would impact the game. They seemed passable, assuming the scale matched up to a typical d20 stat structure, so I didn't think too much about it as whatever server kept track of it all churned in the background.

I was a little surprised as the process ended abruptly after that, not giving me a chance to select a class, race, or anything else. Part of me wanted to go back and read the few hundred pages of tutorials Harry had included in the other crystal, but I didn't want to waste the first night reading.

No, I was going to jump in, get my feet wet, and get a sense of what I didn't know before I pulled out the instruction manual. The system indicated that my profile had been finalized and everything was ready for me to log in.

I was still a little sleepy, so I removed the pillow from its protective plastic covering, stared at the rectangular code printed on its reverse until my implant recognized it, and the system connected it to my account through the backend.

I got undressed, tossed my regular pillow into an adjacent chair, and let my head sink into the conforming memory foam of the UNDR pillow. A moment after my head made contact, a single stream of particles faded into my view, like a drunken comet a foot above my face. It slowly faded from one color to the next, tracing a lazy figure eight pattern above me. Realizing this was likely a function of the system meant to help me both get to sleep and sync my mind with the UNDR servers, I played along, tracing the path of the stream with my eyes until everything faded to black, and I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes some time later, and I was surprised to see that I was still in my bedroom. Thinking that the system was defective, I turned to get out of bed.

A light from my side table caught my attention as I stood, and I glanced down to find a card, about the size of an antique postcard, shining up at me from the surface of my table. It glowed with a blueish-pink light, bright enough to touch most surfaces in my room, if not entirely illuminate them.

It read: “Welcome to UNDR. You are currently in your lobby, a recreation of your real life home. When you are ready to enter the world of UNDR proper, please place this card on the floor where you would like your entrance portal to be.”

I glanced around, unable to believe that the space around me was a digital recreation. Every surface my eyes met was so perfectly imperfect, so appropriately dirty. I’ve never been someone who prized cleanliness over function, and my apartment certainly reflected that. It wasn’t filthy--there was no food lying about, no dirty clothes covering the floor, but there were dishes in my sink from two days ago and an empty pizza box standing next to my door waiting for me to remember to bring it out to the compactor.

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I stepped past my refrigerator and could see gobs of dried szechuan sauce clinging to the silicon mixing spoon in my sink. As I walked closer, the now ruddy brown flecks of dried peppers embedded in the sauce became discernable, and I felt an insane urge to tidy up the place, to atone for my sometimes disgusting life habits as though by living like a pig I had made some game artist sculpt my apartment in sickening detail.

I really hoped nobody had to do that.

I reached out, my left hand to grab the spoon, my right to turn on the hot water, when a thin silver line began to circle all of the dirty dishes in the left half of my double wide sink. I pulled my hand back, because the line had the glinting texture of a razor’s edge, and I’d sliced my hand on enough submerged kitchens knives to be wary.

The line continued around, leaping from silicone spoon, to pizza cutter, to coffee cup, around the stuck together stack of pancake plates, before making the turn for lap two. There was no physical explanation for it being there that made any sense, and I was suddenly reminded that the apartment I was standing in was not really mine. Well, it was mine. My lobby, the card had said. But not my apartment.

I shook my head, but the bout of unease rode out the motion. I’d heard of something called the “uncanny valley”, when an android or AI approached perfect parity with a human counterpart and started to creep people the fuck out. This virtual apartment was certainly creeping me the fuck out.

As I focused more heavily on the silver thread tracing around the dishes, a menu faded into being above the sink, asking if I would like to do the dishes. Curious, I selected YES by staring at it intently for a half a second, and the dishes faded out of view and reappeared in the sink side drainer, perfectly clean. For someone that hates to do dishes as much as I hate to, the casual ease in which it broke down a thirty minute job to a wave and a blink made me want to ask Harry if I could cancel my real life and stay here permanently.

I glanced at the hoodie draped across the bar stool behind me, and the thread returned. I indicated that, yes, I did want it to be cleaned, and it disappeared. I spent the next minute taking care of a week’s worth of housekeeping, deciding that if housework was this easy, I’d probably do more of it in the real world.

Having exhausted the obvious work in my tiny apartment, I took another look at the postcard. I wanted to put it in a place that wasn’t directly in any walking paths, falling back on my reality-based feng shui needs. I settled on putting it on the floor next to the living room wall, since it comprised the largest amount of available space.

I flicked the card, which landed a half from the heat register at the foot of the wall. When it came to a stop, a fluorescent blue/pink line traced around its edge, as though lit from underneath. The line sped around the card, then sprang out in four lines that each made immediate left turns and formed a circle on the floor. Smaller, faster moving lines made internal connections, then the entire web of lines grew exponentially in brightness, forcing me to look away. Once it faded, I looked back to see a heavy metal manhole cover embedded into my living room floor. Across the center of it, spanning from one side to the other, was the embossed name UNDR.

My first thought was that If I had to crawl through the sewer to get into this world, Harry was going to have to find himself another private investigator. As with the dishes, a menu faded into view above the manhole cover, asking me to step onto the platform to enter UNDR.

I did as requested, and the platform began to rotate forward, like an incredibly slow moving coin flip. I tried to jump off, tried to raise my hands, but none of that actually happened. I remained upright, my body falling toward the floor like a bike with a stick shoved between its front spokes at speed. But when my face touched the floor, it passed completely through. The transition felt like walking from a well lit place into shadow, from the carefully climate controlled 70 degrees of my apartment to the damp wind of a city at night. There was a moment of residual vertigo from my sudden 180 degree rotation, but it quickly gave way to wonder.

The disc at my feet had taken on a black nickel-plated finish. As I looked around, most of the metal surfaces that I could see bore a similar finish. The lamp post to my left, the window frames in the darkened shop behind me, all were coated in the semi-reflective black material.

I took a tentative step away from the manhole cover. The platform I stood on stretched away from the tower behind me for roughly twenty feet, encircling its entire diameter before extending out in each of the cardinal directions like a flat four brimmed baseball hat. Small lips, no higher than the typical four to six inch steps from street level to sidewalk, were the only impedance to the empty space beyond.

Another tower, constructed of similar materials but bearing a platform shaped much differently, stood about thirty feet opposite the place I stood. Close enough to recognize a familiar face through the ambient occlusion of the air, but further than any human alive could jump on their own. To my left and right were similar towers, with others peeking through the gaps between those. The further away they were, the more detail was lost through the atmosphere, like how mountains fade out over great distances. Multicolored light from each tower interacted with the mist, which I had to assume was equal parts water vapor and air pollution, breaking up the darkness just enough to make out the silhouetted forms of people jumping between platforms in the distance.

I was surprised at how much free room I had on the platform around me. When Harry had described it, I expected a ground level cyberpunk mob of jockeying and jostling people, but there were only a few dozen people spread across the few platforms in easy viewing distance of my position.

A green glow brought my eye back to the manhole cover. A thin green tracer, similar to the silver one from my apartment, sped around the circumference of the cover before shooting across the platform to my right. I watched it complete the journey a few times before understanding that I was being prompted to follow.

After a few steps, the pulsing thin meteor train stopped running laps around the manhole cover and began to fire away from between my feet, like some sort of lilliputian phosphorescent GPS indicator. When I had to step to the side to allow someone to pass, the line simply corrected my path. The line led me around the tower to the opposing platform, ramping off the ramp-shaped accelerator platform near its apex.

It obviously wanted me to let this high tech catapult launch me off into the direction of another platform, but I wasn’t ready to do that just yet. I stepped aside, wanting to see a few other people safely complete the journey before risking my own virtual life. I realized it wasn’t real, that there was no way the fall could kill me, but I still needed to see it done by someone that knew what they were doing. I had no idea who would design a introductory experience that involved them risking their lives in ways they never would in real life two minutes after arrival, but chances are they were probably too far removed from being a noob to understand what a daunting task jumping off a perfectly sound building was after your first five minutes in the world.

I watched a few people casually step from the pads, the acceleration so gradual and controlled that they made the trip from accelerator to landing pad like they were riding on an arcing, invisible conveyor belt.

Building up my courage, I walked through the pad and felt the inertia of my body being carried over the edge. The air rushed by gently, with none of the instability or balance issues that might make one panic. Acted on by unseen forces, my body remained upright and steady the entire trip, which was a relief. I mean, I still panicked. A little. But before I could scream or do anything else that would betray the badass persona I was cultivating, my feet touched down on the opposing platform, and the green thread shot away, leading me on.