Everything was as I left it. White marble pillar sat peacefully with an obsidian and gilded book slightly faded. Dust from shattered fragments had been cleaned up. Inside the cover was my name. Gone were the card and hand print from before.

I turned the next page. The first few items were all basic settings. Choosing interface methods such as pop up displays. Colors, borders, I played around with them for a while. Finally I settled on something just out of place enough to be attention grabbing but different than my alerts in the waking world. The weird part had been breaking away from the miniature adventure for system settings. After my review of basic settings the game message box shifted and the book slammed shut without my say so.

Welcome Grant

Use the Book to choose a Voice

“Grant! Skill activate, use book!” I exclaimed to myself.

Nothing interesting happened. With a long drawn out sigh I reached out and flipped to the first page again. The results were completely unexpected. Instead of seeing something on the page, the scenery behind the pillar shifted.

An almost sterilized landscape formed, marble like the books pedestal. A much taller and more formed pillar sprouted from the ground. There were no cracks or ripples of damage like the one I stood next to. On top of the pillar was a woman. Ankles crossed, in a white flowing dress. She stared off into the distance and seemingly took no notice of me or anyone else. An absent wind fluttered through.

“Never could stand a woman on a pedestal.” She must have heard me as the woman, blonde locks and all, turned and gave me a bare hint of a glare. Nothing as crass as a sneer. Not enough action to fully acknowledge my presence, just the edge of a tightening cheek that made her lip curl. I turned the page again.

This one wasn’t even remotely similar. There was a woman, sure, but she had deep red skin and no clothes at all. She sat in the same pose as the woman from before on a chair. After a moment she started to come off her seat with a saucy stride. My heart jumped abruptly and face reddened. Getting caught staring was a social taboo. The way she lifted a leg to step down onto the floor was tantalizing. Seductive half movements. Her hands effortlessly and coyly covering key parts of her body as she walked, almost dance-like, towards me. Moments later, after she captivated me, her body started motions that were dangerously arousing. I flipped the page again.

A giant burly man wearing little more than a few strapped on pieces of armor raised a giant sword. His muscles were solid enough to be carved from marble but glistened with sweat and exertion. That weapon couldn’t have been light. He roared. I turned the page.

Parts of this were clear. They were asking me to choose between all these images of people. Most of them seemed to be archetypes of who knows what. Hah, archetypes in the ARC program. I tried not to chuckle as I flipped past the next few. These figures were all clearly following a theme but likely weren’t as simple as looks alone made them seem.

An angelic female, a clearly devilish one, the wild warrior, those were just the first few of a whole list. A Japanese schoolgirl passed through with a wave and pose. I shook my head and tried not to think about who might pick that one. Next was a librarian. She even had glasses, which people rarely had to wear anymore with surgery being cheaper than lenses. Page flipping paused on a drill sergeant archetype. The man was straight out of every military movie I had ever seen. Seconds later he started screaming.

“You are not prepared! You are a weak little man who couldn’t handle what I have to offer! You keep turning that page right past me maggot!” I did, while trying to wipe off flakes of spittle he managed to shout over to me. Then I turned the page back, flipped off the drill sergeant which set him off again. As I turned back onward I swear the next person was laughing at my antics.

“That’s right! Screw that asshole!” Said a young man dressed in a black leather jacket. I paused for a moment.

“How many choices are there?”

“One for every dream under the sun man. We are legion!” The teen did a kick and started dancing. I smiled, recognizing it from an old music video, then waved goodbye. The younger man waved back and kept right on going, inserting his own sound effects.

It was interesting and definitely neat. I might have scrolled back through a few if they didn’t seem so real. Getting caught staring at the red skinned woman would have been bad for my heart. I sighed and turned another page, hoping for something that would speak to me. Not in a literal sense though, I needed someone that was relatable.

There was a yawn again. I looked over my shoulder, pausing halfway between turning the page away from a child reading a book. The child had been cute, but relating to younger kids was painful to me. I kept asking myself endless amounts of questions. Most were of the ‘what if’ variety, and those often knocked me out of my happy place.

“Oh, you again.”

The small dragon was perched even higher on a pillar behind me. Where that one had come from was beyond me. Perhaps the computer had generated it when the small creature wanted a high vantage point. It looked down at my finger then tilted a small scaled head quizzically.

“I don’t know either. There are so many choices and all I see is a person. Got any suggestions?”

The dragon rippled in a shrug, both wings fluttering slightly.

“Yeah. That’s what I figured.”

I turned the page again and the small child looked up briefly from the book, smiled, and waved. Behind me there was a purr from the dragon. They parted ways as the next person came into being.

A man in prayer complete with a stole. Shortly after was a female in her matching clothes. Next was a woman complete with baby in one arm. She looked both tired and pleased at the same time. My sister wore the same conflicting look as Beth grew up.

“It gets better.”

The woman gave a grunt and waved me away.

Voices came in all shapes and sizes. No two alike, many seemed to have gender counterpoints. Skin color varied and many weren’t human. One Centaur type creature was disturbingly correct in its anatomy. I shuddered for a moment while the great beast gave a laugh. That page was turned quickly before he could rear up and disturb me even more.

One was a short creature that might have been a gnome. A stockier one followed that might be a dwarf. Just scanning through this book was giving me a fairly clear picture of what sort of choices were out there in this game.

Here was a tree and perched up high was a giant cat man. Clearly this was the same race as whomever Liz was playing with in the game. I paused in my perusal. Were these what passed for Gods? Was that what was happening here? A Voice? Oh wow. Now it was even more important to find one that worked for me. Only I had no idea what to choose.

Next up was a Jester looking creature. I hesitated to say human because it wasn’t entirely clear under the clownish edge of frills. Worse still was the long nose on his face and the distorted smile. This one stared at me and didn’t move. His backdrop blank like some others had been before.

I blinked and tried to figure out if I was looking at a mask or its skin. The eyes were dark and sunken, the rest of his face a pearly white. My skin crawled. That had to be a mask. The rest of him was so colorful that it was hard to look in one spot.

Suddenly the room was too quiet. Looking away felt dangerous. I had to struggle and remind myself that this was just a computer program. Nothing here was real. Yet the thought of looking away made my heart race. This Jester creature could have just been staring into the middle distance or something over my shoulder. Just behind me. Was there something there? Maybe?

I risked looking away from that inhumane face for a moment. Just a second to confirm that the door to my Atrium was still in the distance. To check and make sure crawled out of this latest display to get behind me.

The tiny dragon squawked with sudden panic and flew off from its perch. The feeling that had been creeping up behind me was even worse, only now it was from the direction for the Jester I dared look away from.

I turned back and flinched. The Jester was now inches away from my face. A long nose spanned the divide. There was nothing under that mask. No mouth or eyes to be found in the depths of blackness.

Cold clammy fingertips touched my forearm.

“You could not handle what I would ask.” The Jesters distant and distorted voice came out. “Not yet.”

I risked glancing down. The Jester was taking my hand, an action which sent my virtual heart into palpitations, and using it to do something with the book. Together, me almost petrified and the Jester with a frozen grin, we closed the book entirely.

The images and projections of humans and other creatures faded. Even the Jester was gone. I took a few breaths to steady myself. This game had officially freaked me out. Once I got over the rush, part of me realized that these different images, Voices, were completely suckering me in. I watched them like a spectator at a zoo. Some interacted with me and made me realize that this observation was two way. Continue Online was studying me. That idea made me pause.

“If anyone needs to know, I’m really good at polishing the metal frames of our eventual robot overlords!” The comment came out far more nervous than it did joking. In the darkness something once again seemed amused.

I shook myself off and the feelings faded. I was just reading into the empty surroundings. My shrink called it projecting internal fears upon an indifferent landscape. Self-realization was a technique I tried to practice over the last few years. It made me more open with the things that bothered me, like the conversation with Liz earlier today.

Was that just today? I opened the book again, skipping a few pages just to avoid the Jester or any others of that type.

“You seem at a loss.” The latest figure was a middleweight black man. He too wore glasses and had a balding head. Flickers of grey etched what roots remained.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

That tone struck me hard. A rich depth lined each word, firmly gentle with just a single phrase. I didn’t swing towards the guy side of the fence at all. Yet he spoke in such a way that I wanted to talk. Even the question he asked felt comfortable. It was the same sort of question I heard once a month from my psychologist. Two hours a month spent explaining that I hadn’t tried to kill myself in the bathtub this week because I was going strong.

“If we speak for too long, does that mean I’ve chosen you?”

“Not at all. You make the choice clear by placing your hand on the print below.” The heavier man had approached the podium during our conversation.

He was strangely alone in the landscape. Most of the others had been given some sort of backdrop. Warriors had battle scenes, elves had trees or something nature bent. The connections were obvious. Like the Jester this man had nothing else but wasn’t nearly as creepy.

“Can you explain what’s happening?”

“I can, but for each Voice there are rules.”

“Are you whatever passes for Gods in this game?”

“For myself, I believe in a fair exchange.” The black man completely bypassed my question. “You ask a question, and I will answer to the best my understanding, should I choose to.”

“That’s…”

“It’s unfair, but there are restrictions on what we can impart to your kind. Here’s an example, you asked if we are Gods in this game. I can answer by saying yes, but the term God is misleading. We are more like Caretakers of this world.”

“Oh.”

I guess even the developers didn’t want to deal with Christianity. Regions out there in the real world might get upset. Especially since the player base was incredibly huge. Trillium and The ARC Project had a yearly income higher than the Vatican.

“Now I ask you a question, and my rules are that simple. You ask, I ask, you ask, I ask. I will try to keep this exchange even.”

“That’s fair.” It was awesome actually. The gods here had rules right from the get go! That was something insanely unique from anything I’ve ever played. Even before this level of realism. Players never got to just flip through a book and talk to them.

“Why did you not choose this one?” The black man flipped pages back towards the beginning of the section. Moments later he was on the Angelic blonde who sat on a pedestal. This time she didn’t look indifferent, she looked annoyed and glared at the two of us.

“I don’t know.”

“When someone says they don’t know, it either means they are uncomfortable explaining, or don’t know how to word it. Think about my question some more and try to answer it again.” I gave the larger man a confused look. He was dead on, both in matters of comfort and not having the right words.

“She’s on a pedestal.”

“She was placed there by her followers and it has little bearing on her looks. Most of your kind, and those in the world we watch over, remark on her beauty, yet you did not.”

Now she was standing up and looked downright furious. A gust of wind passed through and sent her blonde tresses spinning wildly about her face. Thunder rolled and a storm approached from somewhere outside of our room chilling the air.

“I’m not playing this game for that sort of thing. I had…” As a man, formally in a relationship, I realized just how wrong the words coming out of my mouth would be taken. Looking up revealed a poor reception to my utterance. She was getting even angrier. Her mouth opened in a soundless shout and thunder echoed across. I winced and shied away. Rain was splattering in the landscape across the book's pillar.

“I’m not looking for a replacement of my fiancée!” I shouted downward in desperation. The winds died. By the time I looked up again the angelic woman had resumed her location on the perch. She stared off into the invisible distance.

These Voices were intense.

“Very well. It’s your turn for a question Grant Legate.”

“Are all of you so,” How did I phrase this? They had interacted with me, and I haven’t even created a character yet. There was no entry quests or setting. Nothing. Yet these Voices were clearly part of the game.

“You are allowed to explain how you’re feeling before asking a question. I am no Trickster seeking to lead you astray. I am,” he gestured an arm up and down his midsection “exactly as you see. A man who wishes to exchange questions for answers.”

“Earlier there was a man who yelled in my face. Some military one.”

“Yes.”

“And then there was the one in the mask.” Man or woman, it had been hard to tell from the brief interaction we shared.

“Yes.”

“And her.” I pointed to the woman on the pillar. She would be at home staring out over the sea with that distant gaze.

“Yes.”

“Do you all see me? Wait, no that’s not right…” I waved my hand in confusion and tried to figure out how to phrase this next question. It needed to be something that cleared up my unease.

“You are seeking to understand exactly what is happening here, is that what you want to know?”

It didn’t sound exactly right. I understood, but at the same time it felt incomplete.

“I guess?”

“Very well. You are here, because you chose to be. Some of your kind enter and are treated with far less grace. Yet because you held a key, you will be tested before finding a place in the world.” I nodded to show I was following. This sounded like Ultimate Edition stuff, things not normally given to regular players.

“Here, in this space between our world and yours, are the Voices. We all watch.” He gestured around, and for a moment I could see other faces and figures in the darkness. They faded in and out with bows and waves or grunts. Some smiled, others scowled, yet more looked distracted.

“Each of us takes measure of who you are and may choose to favor you or not before your journey starts.”

“So that thing with me choosing a voice was a lie?”

“Ah, my turn next.”

I clenched my eyes and nodded. The man had given me more of an answer than expected anyway. From that brief explanation it was fairly clear that these Voices, or Caretakers, were AI's. They could choose me just as much as I could try and choose them.

“Why not choose her?” The page flipped over one to the red skinned temptress. The Angelic one was still up on her pedestal, but she looked annoyed while trying to remain serene.

The temptress came to with a black chair that she straddled. This view was both a tease and a promise. Her legs flowed out either side and showed nothing but curves spinning down to obviously manicured toes. She rested her face on a propped up hand and smiled.

“For the same reason I didn’t pick the first one.” I almost groaned the answer.

“That answer feels very incomplete Grant Legate. Lust and love is not the same thing, and neither are these two.”

“I didn’t come here just to bang someone.” It was crude and to the point.

This made the temptress smile. Drat, I remembered how alluring she was far too late.

“Ah, but you would love it.” Her voice was far too stimulating and made me shake. I had to close my eyes and try not to respond on any level. The black man made a noise and clicked his tongue. Shortly thereafter both women faded away from view. I could still feel their presence though. That lingering hint of an overwhelming female and her cold distant counterpoint. Both were too perfect to be real, for different reasons.

“I’ve known men and women who spend their entire lives chasing one of them, and would die happy with a glimpse. Here, we give your kind the chance to get closer than any from our world.” He smiled again, satisfied with how things were progressing. I couldn’t say I was happy but I was rather enjoying the whole procession.

“It intrigues me when someone turns down the offer.” He said. “Your turn Grant Legate. If you have another question.”

“Don’t tell me some of you all are betting on who I’ll choose.” I groaned.

“There are a few who do, yes.” The man gave a short chuckle. “If that sort of thing interests you I can let you know the results.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“If it’s any consolation most of them are out of the running. Normally your kind chose from one of the first few. Looks are a valuable thing.”

My eyes drifted downward towards a gut that had grown over the years. Expecting fanciful looks from a woman was unfair. I only had this pudgy midsection and a wad of emotional baggage to offer in exchange. The me of years gone by might have been worthwhile. Once, I had been a highly paid accountant and mentally balanced.

“It’s your turn still, Grant Legate.”

“Yeah.” I shifted gears. “Is this book ordered from those most chosen to those least chosen?”

“It is. Across your kind and our world.” He confirmed.

“Huh.” I pondered the faces that had passed by, the creatures and images. Here was this man, who had to be near the back. Why had so few chosen him?

“You’re not very popular are you?”

“In this case I can both answer your question and pose my next one. Please remember the rules and answer me clearly or this relationship will have to end.”

I nodded and waited.

“I am not, as you have stated so succinctly, popular.” I swear there was amusement in the room. Less than before, far fewer, but there were enough to fill the air with amusement.

“People often do not like the questions I pose. I’ve been told they are invasive and none of my business. Yet you do not seem upset at me, more at the situation.”

“How…” The black man raised an eyebrow at my almost posed question. I put up a hand and cut myself off, then nodded again.

“Why is that Grant Legate?”

“The short answer?”

“A complete answer of any length is fine.”

“You’re not the first shrink I’ve talked to. In my world I’m in meetings, have a sponsor, the whole nine yards to get my life back together. There’s nothing you could ask that I haven’t already said out loud dozens of times.”

“Very well Grant Legate. I will accept that answer. It’s your turn.”

“Okay. Yeah, I have a good one.”

“I hope so.”

“What the hell did that little dragon do to my Atrium?” Said little dragon had alighted on the broken pillars edge. Tiny claws dug into formed groves and threatened to tear off more chunks of marble. It was completely indifferent to my angry pointing finger.

“Not just that, specifically, how the hell did loading this world up cause my fiancée’s image to speak.”

Surprise crossed the heavyset man’s face as he turned around to glare at the small dragon. The much smaller creature crouched and winced, it almost seemed to be pleading but no words came out. Its mouth didn’t even open. Soon it was backing up and almost falling of the broken pillars rear.

The exchange wasn’t just limited to those two. There was whispering again, similar to what had happened when I first placed my hand on the book. My gut told me these Voices, or computer programmed personalities, were talking about something. None of the words were distinct. Finally the room pulsed once, a brilliant blinding light. Whispering stopped. The small dragon didn’t look up. After a long pause the black man turned back around looking upset and distracted.

“That is not a question I can answer at this time, but we will arrange a chance for compensation.”

“Will you be able to answer it sooner or later?” The man lost some of his scattered anger and focused on my latest question.

“That depends entirely on you Grant Legate. Would you like to know eventually? You may not like the answer.”

“Yes.”

“Very well. I will work to provide you an opportunity.” There was a pause in conversation as the whispers rushed around again. “If we judge it to be allowable.”

The background chattered died, seemingly satisfied.

“I’m afraid I’ve lost track of who was where in the questions.” He admitted. “Recent, developments,” he turned with a half glare again “have distracted me.”

Computers can get distracted? There was hope that humanity might survive the eventual takeover of our robot overlords. Maybe we can lock them up with logic loops and eat up their processing power.

“I’m not sure.” I was terrible at keeping track of the here and now anyway. Only when working could I focus, and even it was because there was only one task at a time. “You can ask a few if you want.”

“Not right now.” Lips moved as he counted back. “Your turn I believe. Since I could not answer your earlier question completely.”

“Okay.” I shook off this whole weird situation.

This was probably just some clever ploy to get me into the game. Continue Online's evil plot started with destroying all the other digital items I owned. A follow up act involved pretending to punish itself. That was far too complex for me to even conceive of. Honestly if a game wanted to go to that extent to get me hooked, I would sign off on it.

“Did you have a name? Do any of you?” I gestured to the darkness that had housed the other Voice’s. Most of them were likely out there somewhere still.

“We all do, though the names we were created with are far from perfect.”

“Okay. What would like me to call you?” Computer programs probably couldn’t generate perfect names.

“James.”

“Just James?” Computer AI's in a fantasy world would hopefully have better naming sense than the EXR-Seven or Second Player helm. VCE-One through VCE-Seven hundred and pie would sound far less impressive than James.

“Why, is that name not good enough, Grant Legate?” I smiled at his return question. Even our belated greeting was following the question trading requirements.

“James is fine. It just seems very out of place for another world.”

“It’s not from our world, it’s from yours.” He said.

“Well I guess that explains it.”

“Your turn again Grant Legate.”

I frowned. I was beginning to suspect we had different definitions of the word question. Or maybe he could just bend the rules a little if he desired.

“Okay then.” I reached back over to the book, ignoring the tiny half cat sized dragon which was now just staring at me. I reached out and rubbed the top of its head. The small thing was so surprised that it puffed out a glob of steam and jerked away.

“Heh.” I ignored the small creature and flipped through the pages again to get to the back. I knew what choice would work for me.

“Looks like I’m signing up with you James.”

“Are you sure?”

One hand pressed down into the outline of a hand. Lights and glowing suffused my impression. What had once been darkness was now lighting up. Walls seemed far closer than they had been. We were now somewhere else entirely. A smaller room that felt far different both in presence and atmosphere.

“Yeah. Looks like it.”

“Very well.” The man looked around at the new landscape. “Then we should get started with the next phase.”