When Anya came to, it was still night outside. The sounds of endless traffic and the only somewhat subdued bustle of the city filtered to her through the hole in her window. She was surrounded by tiny shards of glittering glass and a small dark puddle of rum and coke.

Glittering like the stars, Anya thought through a murky haze of semi-consciousness. No stars in the city. What was that orange thing?

Her head started to clear as she winced and the pain brought her back to her senses. She sat up, careful to not cut herself on the glass around her. Her hair was damp and sticky with soda and booze and she cursed. She’d have to wash it again. There was some dust around her as well and she coughed as she brushed it off her. She had knocked several books off a shelf nearby when she had fallen. Her apartment was messier than she had thought, even moreso now with the spilled booze and glass all around.

She moved to the side and winced again as her chest tightened. It felt sore in the center of her ribcage, just between her breasts. She reached down and frowned when she felt a hole in the middle of the sweater she used as pajamas. The hole was about the size of a quarter, and singed black around the edges. Her chest beneath the hole looked undamaged, and she brushed her fingers against her skin there to see if it was tender.

There was a slight tingle and then a beam of light shot out from her chest and flashed across her room.

Anya screamed and scrambled back on her hands and feet, heedless of the the broken glass around her. She didn’t notice as the tiny shards bit into her palms and soles of her feet as she tried to escape the thing suddenly in front of her. She was too panicked to focus on it, startled out of her wits by the appearance of a glowing object that filled most of her vision. When she thumped her back against her bed she had no choice but to stop and stare up.

A large opaque gray rectangle floated in front of her, covered in glowing orange text. The text was unreadable, just a series of squiggles and lines and dots that might have been a language. As she stared at it, the writing began to change, snapping itself into recognizable English letters. Anya tried to get her heart and breathing under control as she stared at the rectangle. She squinted at it as the last of the unknown letters transformed into English.

Her full name was at the top of the large rectangle and next to it, the number twenty-eight. The rectangle——or screen, or whatever it was——was split into two columns underneath her name and age. The left side was labeled “STATISTICS” and below that were words beside more numbers:

Brawn-3

Intelligence-7

Awareness-4

Dexterity-4

Fortitude-5

Charm-4

Speed-4

Fortune-4

On the right side of the rectangle was another label that read “SKILLS” below which were three other categories: “PHYSICAL”, “MENTAL”, and “OTHER.” Beside each of these was an arrow that looked like a drop-down menu indicator on a website. In the far upper right corner of the rectangle was a glowing number “1,” and in the center at the very bottom was a flashing tangerine circle with the label “HELP.” Below that, a smaller message with a star next to it said, “YOU HAVE UNSPENT POINTS TO ALLOCATE.”

Anya stayed on the floor and stared up at the floating rectangle before her. Though really, she had played enough games to know what it was as soon as it had translated itself into English.

It was a character stat menu for a game, and it was hers.

She reached out to touch it and her fingers passed through it as though it were a hologram. There was a slight tingling sensation as her fingers went through the floating menu, and again when she pulled her hand back. She tried to rest her fingers on it, and found that while it wasn’t solid, tiny halos of dull light appeared around her fingers when she made contact with the menu.

She looked down at the small hole in the center of her sweater and frowned. She touched her sternum, just below the hole, and there was another tingle there, and the menu disappeared. She touched her sternum again and the menu reappeared hovering before her. Whenever she turned, the menu turned with her, always centered in front of her. It phased through furniture, the walls, anything solid.

She made the menu disappear again, then looked down around her at the puddle of rum and coke, glass, and a few splotches of blood from her cut hands and feet.

“Oh shit,” Anya whispered and winced as she limped to the bathroom on her cut feet and spent a few minutes taking the tiny pieces of glass out of her skin and putting bandages over the thankfully small cuts. She focused on just tidying up the mess in her room for the moment, and picked up every piece of glass and mopped up every drop of blood and booze and dust.

She paused as she stood at the sink wringing out a dishrag. Was it the booze? She hadn’t had that much. Maybe she was hallucinating. That didn’t explain the window though. Something real had broken her window, and it had come from outside, or she wouldn’t have had to pick up glass off the floor. The hole in her sweater was real too. She felt the burned, crisp edges of the toasted cotton with her fingers, then sighed and touched her sternum once again.

The character menu appeared in front of her just as before, glowing orange and steady.

“Man, what the actual hell?” Anya breathed. She walked to her bed, the menu floating ahead of her as she moved, and sat down on the mattress. She had a million questions as she stared at the menu, and thankfully, it had been kind enough to provide what she hoped would be an answer to them. Anya reached out and pressed the flashing orange “HELP” button. It blinked once and a bright flash of orange light blinded Anya as she cried out and fell backwards onto the floor.

She blinked until she saw something floating in the air between her and the menu. It was made of translucent orange light and was about the size and shape of a very chubby baby with an over-large head shaped like a rose just starting to come into bloom. Its arms and legs were stumpy, and she saw it didn’t really have fingers or toes, but hands like mittens and feet that ended in rounded points. Its face was simplistic and almost cartoonish, featuring a wide mouth and huge eyes. It smiled at her and waved.

Anya screamed and threw a shoe at the creature. The shoe passed right through it, and the menu behind it, and hit the wall behind hard enough to leave a dent.

“What the fuck!” Anya shouted.

“Hello!” the creature said in a sweet, childish voice. It didn’t seem bothered or even to notice that Anya had just tried to knock it out of the air with her shoe. “I’m your personalized assistant! What can I help you with?”

“Get out of my apartment!” Anya snapped and readied another shoe. She knew it wouldn’t do any good but it felt good to have something to threaten the creature with.

“Of course!” the creature said. It floated to the side and through her window. It hovered in the air just outside and smiled in at her. “Now what?”

Anya kept as far away from her window as she could and eyed the floating creature outside. It didn’t seem dangerous, and it had technically done as she asked. At worst, the impish creature was too literal. Anya tapped her chest and the menu vanished, but the creature remained.

“I see you’ve dismissed your menu,” the creature said, its voice muffled by the pane of glass separating them. “Would you like me to return to stand-by?”

Anya regarded the creature while it continued to smile placidly at her. It didn’t appear threatening, even after she had thrown a shoe at it. Hell, it didn’t even look like it was tangible, floating through the window like that.

“Come back inside,” Anya said but kept away from the window as the creature followed instructions and floated back into her apartment. “What are you? What’s going on? What the hell is all this?”

“I’m your personalized assistant!” it replied. This time it even gave her an awkward salute with one of its stubby arms. “What’s going on is I’m introducing myself! All of this appears to be your apartment!”

Anya glared at the chipper response. It really was entirely literal. She took a deep breath and she sat down in her second-hand armchair.

“I get that you’re my assistant but what are you? You’re not human, clearly,” Anya gestured at it.

“Oh! I see. I’m an Artificial Intelligence designated to you, Anya Sabrina Nowicki, for your use in determining how you wish to specify the use of your points for your personal statistics and skills.”

“Uh…huh. So this is all my information?” Anya said as she brought her menu back up again and pointed at her stats. “I have a ‘Brawn,’ score of three, according to this.”

“You sure do! That’s incredibly weak!”

“Hey,” Anya said and narrowed her eyes at the AI. It wasn’t entirely wrong, though. She’d needed Tori to help her move her overstuffed armchair, and Tori had done most all of the work.

“You can make adjustments to your basic statistics with the points available to you, as well as any existing skills you have or new skills you would like to acquire.”

“New skills?” Anya asked. The Ai floated the the right side of her menu and pointed at the “PHYSICAL” tab. It flashed and the menu expanded to fill up one entire side of her apartment. The limited options of the main menu were replaced by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of options.

A daunting list of physical abilities both familiar and bizarre glowed in front of Anya. She scanned the list, wide eyes darting from one skill to another. Her face twisted in wonder and confusion as she took it all in.

Akido. Fidget Spinning. Archery. Weaving. Stunt Driving. Finger Guns. Acrobatics. Heavy Weapons. Sneaking. Cliff Diving. Shadow Puppetry. Disco. Dismemberment. Baseball. Fencing (swords). Fencing (construction). Marksmanship. Jump-Rope. Boxing. Skateboarding.

Anya was at a loss for words as she continued to scan the list. It looked like every single physical pursuit somebody could imagine, including several that were impossible, like dinosaur riding and Atlantean wrestling.

She tapped a button on the side of the menu that shrunk the “PHYSICAL” section back down to its more modest size. She tapped the “MENTAL” section next and wasn’t the least surprised when the menu expanded into another enormous selection of options.

Physics. Japanese. Mahjong. Architecture. Polka Trivia. Naval Strategy. Dowsing. Business. Surgery. Wine. Astronomy. Pig Latin. Board Games. Persuasion. Saxophone. Painting. Robotics. Psychology. Deduction. Guerilla Tactics. Rocketry. Daemonic Speech.

Almost every single skill she saw had a “0” next to it, but then she found “English.” Unlike all the other skills, this one had a “10” next to it. She tapped on the English button and a smaller sub-menu appeared.

It showed a small progress bar at the bottom that was currently less than half full. The number “10” was on the left of the progress bar and the number “11” on the right. A list of numbers at intervals of five, up to 100, was below the progress bar. Everything above “10” was grayed out and had a padlock next to it, but “10” and “5” glowed bright orange and had descriptions beside them.

LEVEL 5: BASIC FLUENCY. BASIC SLANG AND IDIOMS.

LEVEL 10: COMMON FLUENCY. COMMON SLANG AND IDIOMS. REFINED PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR.

SPECIALIZATION: ADVANCED OBSCENITIES

Anya snorted. “Yeah that definitely sounds like me.”

“Would you like to increase your English score?” the AI asked.

“No, I think I’m okay on that front,” Anya replied and then tapped on the “OTHER” category. A third exhaustive list of skills appeared. While the other categories had had their own bizarre entries, this one was nothing but.

Flame Dominion. Flesh Shaping. Teleportation. Ectoplasmic Materialization. Prophecy. Elemental Summoning. Void Walking. Ki Mastery. Shapeshifting. Evocation. Faith. Pheromone Secretion. Necromancy. Transvection. Pact-Making. Energy Manipulation. Density Control.

This list was slightly different than the others. Each skill had a small gray padlock icon next to it. When she tapped on one (the Flame Dominion skill), a message popped up that said “LOCKED UNTIL LEVEL 30.” She tapped a number of other skills but the same message kept popping up for each one.

Too many options. Too much to think about. Too many more questions spiraling away from her. She closed the “OTHER” menu and returned to the basic stats and skills screen.

“Is this…real?” Anya asked the AI. “Am I hallucinating?”

“Yes it’s real, and no you’re not hallucinating,” it replied.

“Sounds like something a hallucination would say.”

“It does!”

Anya frowned at the AI, then pointed at her stats. “So I have these 28 points here for everything…”

“No,” the AI said. “You have 28 stat points each for physical, mental, and other skills. However, other skills cannot be unlocked until level 30, as you saw.”

“Okay,” Anya said, “so I got 28 stat points. What happens if I make my brawn stat go up to a 9?”

“You would become stronger, of course!” the AI replied.

“Just like that?” Anya snapped her fingers.

“No snapping is required.”

Anya clenched her fists and took a breath. “I mean, any changes would happen immediately?”

The AI sensed her frustration and frowned. “I’m sorry if my language skills are not entirely fluent yet. I know I’ve had several minutes to master this language, but I’m a slow learner. In response to your question, the changes will occur in a few seconds or less.”

“Can I reverse any changes?” Anya asked.

“Yes!” the AI said and beamed.

“If I change my brawn am I gonna completely transform into an over-muscled monster woman?”

“No!” The AI said. “These questions are easy! Am I helping?”

“Yeah you’re doing okay,” Anya said and sighed. She still wasn’t convinced she hadn’t lost her mind from stress or fatigue or something else. She figured she might as well try the menu out and see what happened before she called Tori or a shrink or both and explain what was happening.

Anya decided to raise her brawn stat since it was her lowest, and because when she saw the glowing number “3” she thought of the man on the subway elbowing her in the back of the head without a second thought.

She raised her brawn up to “9”, and 28 points became 22. A prompt appeared that read, “CONFIRM CHANGES? YES/NO,” and a slight hesitation, Anya tapped, “YES.”

She waited, eyes moving across her apartment, at the AI, and the surface of the menu. She was about to press the arrow again when her body spasmed, and every muscle she had seized up in an immobilizing, agonizing full-body cramp that made her gasp in pain. Tears sprang to her eyes as she convulsed on her bed, gasping for air as her chest was crushed by invisible hands and what felt like cords of razor wire whipped through her limbs. She couldn’t scream as her arms and legs stretched and popped, bones cracked, and she heard her skin stretching until she thought it must have torn open.

It was over after two or three seconds.

“God damn!” Anya gasped when she could breathe again. “What was that?”

“Congratulations on using your menu for the first time!” the AI said. “Your changes have been applied.”

Anya groaned and got to her hands and knees. She was incredibly sore, but the feeling was already starting to fade. There was still a vague tightness across her chest, and her arms and legs, everywhere really. She glanced down and saw that her loose sweater and pajama pants were no longer loose, but pulled taut across her, straining to contain her. She flexed one arm and her eyes widened as the sleeve of her sweater ripped open and revealed a very large and very new bicep.

“No way,” Anya breathed. She looked in the mirror nearby and her jaw fell open. Powerful muscles had appeared beneath her pajamas. She had also grown about a foot, somehow, perhaps to accommodate her new mass. Her sweater was no longer long enough to conceal her tummy, which was less of a tummy and now more of a washboard. She poked her newly acquired six-pack and shook her head at the feeling of firm, springy muscle.

Then the reality of the moment washed over her and she slumped down to the floor. She examined her hands, arms, legs, felt all over herself to confirm that this was real. She looked in the mirror again and let out a shuddery breath.

That was her face. It was quite a bit leaner than before, but she was still very recognizable. Same dull red hair, same dark eyes, thick eyebrows, same freckles dusted across the bridge of her nose. Her gaze drifted down from the mirror to her hands again, her rock-hard stomach, and her much longer and more powerful legs. Anya let out a quiet chuckle, then screamed.