“Looking for this?” the man asked, producing a large metal key from his pocket.

“Oh hey, yeah.” Kyle said in a sarcastic deadpan. “Can I see that?” Kyle suspected any further attempt to operate the lock without a key would prove fruitless, so he stood up and held out his hand.

“Of course. But first, we need to talk.” The man hid the key back in one of the pockets of his robe.

“Sure. I’ll start. What the hell is going on here?” Kyle demanded.

“You are in ‘Infigeas’, the newest game by Virtuaverse. In this world, you-”

“How did I get here?” Kyle interrupted. The man paused for a moment.

“I cannot comment on how Virtuaverse technology works. Suffice it to say, this is simply an immersive virtual reality simulation in which-”

“Did you do surgery on me while I was unconscious?”

Again, the man paused before responding. “No. That was not needed given this interface.”

“So what happened while I was out, then?” Kyle demanded. He knew he was acting demanding and rude, but he didn’t care. It’s not like it was exactly polite to stick people in dungeons while they’re knocked out.

“We brought you into this cell while awaiting the other contestants.”

“Yeah, how? This is virtual reality. I’m a real person. How’d you ‘Bring me in’?”

“I cannot comment on how Virtuaverse technology works. Suffice it to say, this is simply an immersive virtual reality situation in which-”

“For crying out loud!” Kyle shouted, throwing his hands in the air in frustration and turning away from the cell door. As he stood there, fuming, the man in the robe remained silent. Either he was unsure of what to say, or he was waiting for Kyle to calm down.

Kyle knew, intellectually, that he was angry. But there was something missing. He had no sense of adrenaline. His fingers didn’t feel twitchy. There was something wrong with him, but not in a way he could put a finger on concretely enough to ask the man about. Instead, he opted for a different line of conversation. “Who are you, anyway?” Kyle asked the man, turning back to face him.

“I am a wall-breaker, a special kind of NPC with authority to speak frankly with the player about such things as game mechanics, interface, and the outside world.”

That would explain the pauses. It was probably some sort of AI that queried a neural net to select which pre-canned answer to reply with. “You can talk about the outside world?” Kyle asked.

“Yes.”

“How long was I unconscious for?”

“Sixteen days.”

“Over two weeks?! Has nobody wondered where I am? My girlfriend? My parents?”

“They know where you are.”

“And they didn’t try to save me?”

“You volunteered to be here. Your friends and family likely approve of your decision.”

That was junk, and Kyle knew it. There was nothing in the contract that suggested that he’d volunteered to be here. And knowing Kyle’s father, there was probably a giant legal battle going on in the outside world. Kyle was ticked, but the adrenaline still wasn’t kicking in. What the hell was wrong with him?

Well, arguing with a computer was probably pointless. Containing his weird, purely-mental quasi-rage, he tried to make the best of his situation. “Fine. You’re obviously here to give me a tutorial. Lay it on me.”

Another pause. There was a reason most games still stuck to pre-planned dialogue trees; AIs capable of responding to any arbitrary input were often agonizingly slow. “To maximize the immersiveness of this game, no interface elements appear unless you specifically request them from the system. You do that with your Action Crystal, located on the inner side of your wrists.”

Kyle checked for such a crystal. He saw a small gray hexagonal crystal about the size of his thumbnail attached to the inside edge of his left wrist. “If you press this crystal,” the man continued, “you open up a user interface.” Kyle tapped the crystal, and a glowing, floating, translucent menu popped up about a foot in front of his left hand. There were six options; Status, Skills, Social, Inventory, Options, and Help. It was obviously a game interface. So much for the theory of being physically located in some dungeon somewhere. He was trapped in some virtual world for sure.

Kyle’s gamer instincts made him itch to poke around in the menus, but the man kept talking; “I’ll leave it to you to experiment, but please note the ‘Help’ menu. As you gain skills and abilities, you will find their technical descriptions in this menu. As you have no access to community-created wikis, this documentation will be all you have. Please check there frequently for additional tutorials and information”

“I’m assuming I’m trapped in here until somebody wins?”

Again with that infernal AI pause. “Yes.”

“What happens if I die?”

“You will be put in suspended animation for twenty-four hours, after which you will wake up. Your exact respawn location will depend on your-”

“A whole day!?” Kyle said, appalled. “How long does this freakin’ competition take?”

The importance of the question made the pause unusually frustrating. Finally, the NPC said, “the designers expect for this contest to take at least a year.”

“A year? At least? What about my college education! My girlfriend! My bills! My life! No. I refuse. Get me out of this game. This isn’t what I signed up for. It’s not what I agreed to. It’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s not gonna happen.”

Pause. “Logging out is not an option at this point.”

“My father’s gonna sue every cent off your sorry company, you know that, right?”

Pause. Then, the hooded figure pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, which swung open with a dramatic creak. A small hatchet materialized in the figure’s hand. Kyle immediately tensed, but the figure let the axe slide in his grip until he was holding near the axe head, and then handed the axe, handle first, to Kyle, who took it. “This is your starting weapon. You may find it useful in other ways, as well.”

Kyle considered attacking the hooded man out of spite, but decided against it. The man was just an NPC, not an actual person. Threatening or killing him would do nothing constructive. In fact, worst case scenario, the hooded man could end up being some incredibly powerful sorcerer or something and zap him to death and… cost him 24 hours, Kyle supposed.

“What now?” Kyle asked.

“I will leave you to it.” The man walked down the hallway, fading to translucency before disappearing as he left.

Kyle sighed. There was a dungeon in front of him he would need to conquer, but before that, there was something even more intimidating he had to face.

He pressed the crystal on his wrist, then punched the “Help” button with his left thumb when it appeared. As he feared, it was pretty much a giant wall of text split into hyperlinked topics. He picked a topic, sat down with a sigh, and started reading.