I stood there for a moment in thought before walking back over to the computer by the massive library. It was so surreal to walk out of the door to my apartment and out into open space before approaching where I had entered this whole thing. Or had I even moved at all? Had everything moved around me when Xa created the apartment? I guess it didn’t really matter if I was to start to understand and think of this reality as it was, a digital one.

I froze and stared off into space again when I had gotten up close to the standing computer desk terminal. “Could it really be like that?” I mumbled to myself as I turned around and walked back into the fake apartment. Yes, I knew that what I wanted to attempt didn’t need me to walk all the way back but I didn’t care, it was where I wanted to start. I turned around once I was standing next to the coffee table with the empty mountain dew can and looked back out through the door at the computer terminal. “Here goes nothing.” I said under my breath as I imagined standing where I just had been standing, two feet away from the terminal.

I looked around with my eyes wide open as I waited for something to happen. I blinked and was there! In the moment that it took me to blink I was standing exactly where I wanted to be. Just going from nothing changing to instantly appearing right where I had imagined myself was a bit startling. I jumped back a step and gave an amazed chuckle.

“I wonder what would have happened if I had accidentally imagined myself standing too close to the desk?” I said as I imagined appearing with it merged with me. The whole area around me instantly had a deep red tint shrouded over everything and I heard Tutor shout at me from a couple feet away. “STOP!”

I widened my eyes, trying to keep them from blinking and turned to look at her. It was the first time I had heard her shout and the ambient red tinge was freaking me out a little. “What? How do I cancel that thought?” When I looked over at her I also noticed words appearing next to her in the air.

Guest Kevin almost cut himself in half.

Guest Kevin’s instant environment manipulation reconsidered.

Implementing double check safeguard.

Guest Kevin credited 380 cr for IO.

Guest Kevin Cr account balance: 400 cr

Tutor glanced at the writing in front of her and said “You may blink now Kevin. The system just anticipated you doing something very bad to yourself and stepped in to stop it. This is what was just going to happen.” She said as an exact copy of myself and the computer desk appeared in front of her. It was the exact moment when I had just teleported myself in front of the desk, my copy jumped back a step and chuckled. He was exactly the same height as me and everything. It was so weird to see. I walked around to stand next to Tutor to get a view of myself from the front as I listened to myself say “I wonder what would have happened if I had accidentally imagined myself standing too close to the desk?”

My other self blinked and instantly appeared with my stomach embedded with the table surface clear though me. A look of shock and utter horror filled my copy's face as his legs buckled and sagged and fell to the floor. There was a strange tearing sound as the lower half of him fell and I gathered that it was caused by the skin that tried to bond to the table that had part of my midsection embedded inside it and failed. A blood curdling scream left my copy's lips as he tried to hold onto the top of the table.

“Ok! I have seen enough!” I said as I mentally willed the tragedy in front of me to pause and be washed away. I came up against something in my mind, almost as if it was a click or type Yes to continue screen on a computer before I agreed with it and it all vanished.

“Tutor! Please tell me how I can avoid doing stupid things like that in the future and feel free to speak your mind about what I can do to improve my understanding of changing this virtual environment. Also, what the heck is IO and how is it giving me credits?” I said as I turned to stare at Tutor.

“Well for one thing, you didn’t consider protecting yourself like an intelligent being would have done. You just straight up imagined yourself where the desk was. Does your species lack self preservation? An intelligent being would have imagined themselves displacing the table surface or even becoming out of phase with the matter of the desk to avoid being fused to it. You didn’t think of any form of self preservation or what might have happened. Yes, this is a virtual body but you still can damage and harm yourself if you don’t modify it to achieve what you desire. Think of it like cheat codes for a video game. One such mode you can activate could be something like “God mode” where you can’t receive any damage or feel any pain. You can even modify your pain thresholds so that even if your body did receive damage, you wouldn’t feel it, though your body would react accordingly.” She answered at length.

“Also IO is Interest Observed. That means that you did something so out of the ordinary that you garnered interest from citizens who chose to observe it. It seems that no one had ever thought to cut themselves in half as a young one. It is a good thing that the system stepped in when it did or you would have had to put yourself back together while under immense pain. The moment you displayed your ability at mentally changing the environment my ability to control it ceased. It is part of the training wheels that young ones slowly lose as they grow up. I still am capable of actions but only if you specifically ask or tell me to do what is on your mind.” She paused for a moment before continuing “The system enabled a double check feature inside your mind to ask you to make sure of the actions that you wish to accomplish before you commit to them. It seems that your alien mind doesn’t have separate compartments where you force it to action. Think of it as the barrier between your mind and your tongue. Now there is a barrier between your mind and what you want to materialize. This will save you from actually harming someone or causing their car to blow up if they cut you off.” She said as she read the thoughts that my mind had racing through them while she spoke. “Yes, the unbridled imagination of a child linked to the power of many cr could do great damage. This is why our minds are built and trained from birth.”

I looked down at the space where my simulated copy had just vanished. Everything was just so much to take in all at once. “What time is it Tutor? I mean… what time would it be for me back home?” I asked as I just wanted to take a break and regroup.

“It has been several hours since you arrived here. By now it is mid afternoon 4:13 pm if you keep to your Earth 24 hour schedule.” Tutor said as she looked down at her wrist where a small golden watch appeared. It was a nice touch. I supposed that everything could be HUDs and written in the air for me to see. Having her at least appear to be a little normal was quite comforting.

“Thanks.” I said as I looked around and gently bit my cheek. “Looks like I had the training wheels removed.” I said as I remembered back to the gruesome image I had just witnessed. Already it was starting to fade from my mind, sure the clear understanding of the danger was still there, but the horror at seeing myself just being cut in half was already dampened. I wondered if it was part of the system at work, resetting and normalizing trauma to aid the individual to get past it. It made me wish that people back on Earth could have something like that too.

I decided to look around so I turned and wandered towards the library, choosing this time to actually walk and to keep the instantaneous travel to a minimum for the moment. True, it did sound really exciting but I wasn’t in a rush to cut myself in two so fast again. As the tall shelves drew closer I just smiled at how lifelike and real everything seemed from the pressure of walking on the bottom of my feet to the movement of the material of my clothes. I was beginning to understand that the more I focused on something, the more it would adjust and become more real from the memories in my mind and from the massive libraries of textures and data stored away by whatever ran the simulation I was in.

I reached out and touched the wooden book shelf and ran my fingers along it’s surface, just eyeing the covers while feeling the texture against my fingertips. For the next little while I just wandered and picked up books that caught my attention at random. It was as if there was a book for everything. Each topic was very specific and some books had several or even hundreds of authors to the one book. I took off a book called “The Life cycle of Anixorns.” and rifled through the pages. It wasn’t a very thick book and only sported three authors but it was very well written and even had graphs and pictures to show the stages and length of time it would take whatever an Anixorn was to live through its life.

From a picture it appeared that an Anixorn was a type of creature that looked like a stingray at first glance except for the fact that it’s bottom surface excreted a corrosive mucus that allowed it to taste and eat whatever it slithered across. It wasn’t at the top of the food chain but seemed to be avoided like skunks were on our world simply because ingesting the corrosive mucus would tend to kill whatever ate it. Only one creature was found that was smart enough to prey on an Anixorn and it was a type of crab looking creature that would nibble it to death over years. I put that book back and kept wandering.

Yes, a library was peaceful but today it just wasn’t doing it for me. I felt lost and without a clear direction of what I should do. I headed back to the meeting area, what I was calling the place that I entered at the beginning, and materialized the most comfortable and plush lazyboy I could think of to sink back into. As a second thought I made one for Tutor as well so she could have some place to sit. I didn’t bother to look and see if she would take it, instead I simply sat back and got lost in my thoughts, lost in all the memories that brought me up to this point.