I stood there by “my” tree for a minute, finding myself unaccountably reluctant to move away. Naturally, that didn’t last long; directly on the heels of my trepidation, my anger flared and I walked the two steps it took me to reach the faintly glowing path and began to walk west. Soon enough, the anger faded away, replaced by a sense of anticipation at what I might find at the end.

The path continued on almost arrow straight and disappeared in the distance, the darker green gloom of the forest seeming to merge with and overwhelm the weak light cast on the path. At first, my head swiveled constantly to each side as well as up into the thick canopy of dark leafy boughs, but as I could barely see more than a few yards between the trees that lined it, and no further than the first level of branches overhead, I soon grew bored with that. Having nothing else to do, I opened my character sheet:

CHARACTER SHEET at the end of the informational portion of the BEGINNER TUTORIAL:

[CHARACTER]

NAME: TOM NOBODY

RACE: HUMAN

SEX: MALE

AGE: 16

LVL: 0

CLASS: NONE

LIFE: 15/15 [1/10]

DEXTERITY: 28/28 [1/10]

MANA: 41/41 [1/20]

SPIRIT: 57/57 [1/20]

STRENGTH: 1

DEXTERITY: 2

CONSTITUTION: 1

INTELLIGENCE: 3

WILLPOWER: 5

CHARISMA: 2

LUCK: 2

ABILITY POINTS: [LOCKED: TUTORIAL]

I had to stop walking, because the sheet blocked my view of the path.

“I wonder if I can make these sheets and notifications more transparent so that they don’t block so much of my sight?” I wondered aloud.

SCHEMA didn’t respond, but a slider bar did appear running from top to bottom on the right left-hand side of the CHARACTER SHEET. I reached out and grabbed the slider and moved it downwards, the sheet going from fully opaque to virtually invisible by the time it reached the bottom. I moved it upwards again, and after some fiddling around settled on a point about 1/3 of the way up, as that allowed me to see both the path in front of me and still read the information. I began walking down the path again, perhaps a little more slowly, but at a steady rate as I reviewed my stats.

I was a little surprised by the numbers. I had received the notifications for each increase, but after the first one or two, I hadn’t checked the totals or how they impacted my pools. The biggest gains I’d had were to my WILLPOWER which was now up to 5 raising my SPIRIT pool to 57, followed by a 3 for INTELLIGENCE which put my MANA at 41, a 2 for DEXTERITY which raised my STAMINA pool to 28. My CHARISMA and LUCK scores had both ticked up one point each, but I couldn’t tell if that impacted my four pools or not. Something besides the main characteristics of WILLPOWER, INTELLIGENCE, DEXTERITY, and CONSTITUTION had obviously impacted them, judging by how they each ended in different numbers. I vaguely recalled that other characteristics had been listed as “playing a role” in the different pools, but there had been so much information that I didn’t see how anyone could remember it all.

I still have all those notifications saved in my record, so I can go back and review them when I’m not trying to learn new stuff or running from one place to another. I made a mental note to do so, and immediately, my NOTES page appeared:

REVIEW CHARACTER NOTIFICATIONS TO DISCOVER HOW EACH CHARACTERISTIC AFFECTS MY POOLS.

“Cool!” I mentally switched back to my CHARACTER SHEET as I kept moving down the path.

The big disappointments were in STRENGTH and CONSTITUION which had both remained at 1.

Makes sense, I guess, none of the others seem to require any physical effort, but both of those sound like they’re exclusively physical.

Just then, my subconscious let me know that I’d been hearing some new noises, and that the gloom at the end of the path had lightened up considerably. I could hear someone shouting and a rhythmic clacking noise; it reminded me of a hockey game. I dismissed my CHARACER SHEET and picked up the pace. By the time I reached what turned out to be a large clearing, I was moving at a jog and felt a little out of breath. I guess 28 STAMINA wasn’t all that much.

“Nice of you to finally join us!” The booming voice I’d heard shouting earlier sounded a little to my left. Glancing over. I stopped dead in my tracks; I even took a step or two back. Standing to the side of a row of people was the largest thing on two legs I’d ever seen. I saw a grizzly bear in a zoo, once. It was in an enclosure and when it stood on its hind legs it must have been 8 feet tall; this … thing … made it look petite.

It must have been at least 9 feet tall. Maybe more. Its features were thick and animalistic, with a large forehead that sloped down over tiny, piggish eyes set closely to each side of a wide, piggish snout. Thick tusks curled out from a wide mouth full of large yellow teeth that looked like tombstones when he opened up and continued to yell. My tombstones, probably.

“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open like a baby grath, get your butt in gear and get over here!”

I took a tentative few steps in his general direction but broke into a sprint as he continued shouting like a drill sergeant. A 9-foot tall, 5-foot wide green mountain of neckless bulging muscle on steroids of a drill sergeant that whooped the ass of all the bad little drill sergeants. There was no resist when it came to deciding whether to obey or not, there was only do.

I quickly reached the end of the line where a fist as large as a bowling ball along with several choice descriptions on my parentage that I didn’t understand directed me. As soon as I was in place and in some form of standing at attention, he continued yelling. Not at me, specifically, thank goodness, but at all of us standing in the line, most of us shaking like a line of dogs at the vet. The kid next to me was actually crying. Not loud boo-hoo crying, but a steady flow of snot and tears dripping down his face.

“Now that our last trainee has finally decided to mosey on over, we can get to turning you babies into something that might one day know which end of a sword does the killing! STOP CRYING!”

That last was, of course, directed at the kid, the sergeant suddenly screaming the words in his face. I hadn’t even seen him move from the other end of the line, he was just there.

The kid tried, I’ll give him that much, he really did, but it was like the little Dutch boy, no sooner did he run a homespun sleeve across his upper lip than the dripping tears turned into a veritable river. Pass a hand across his eyes, there goes snot central. Still, through it all, he never made a sound. Not so much as a sniff. Kid probably had more guts than showed right now; truth was, it was probably only my 5 WILLPOWER that kept me from joining him.

“Phaaaw!” the creature gave it up as a lost cause and continued his rant, stomping his 55 gallon oil-drum legs up and down the line of, I gathered, new trainees looking to learn how to use a sword. Not that anyone had asked me what I wanted to learn. Fear, out; anger, in.

I didn’t speak up, though. I might have been fit to chew nails, but I wasn’t stupid.

“Unfortunately for you lot, ain’t nobody got time to teach you how to become proper swordsmen—spearing one trainee in the middle of the line, a female of some species I’d never seen before, but had a vague pop-culture idea might be an elf – elfess, whatever—sword PERSON!” he spat that last bit out like leftover brussels sprouts, his volume ALL CAPS and requisite exclamation points.

“But today is your LUCKY DAY! Your sorry planets are now part of the SCHEMA system, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to join the rest of the advanced races in the Greater Galactic Civilization! With the SCHEMA system, I don’t need to take a bunch of putrid punks and hope beyond hope that one of you might have what it takes to master the sword! I just have to beat your sorry asses until you hear that beautiful DING! that tells you you got the swords skill and then turn the sorriest excuses for living creatures I’ve ever seen in all my born days over to the next unlucky trainer!”

Seeing a few furtive glances over towards where another group of similarly unlucky trainees were whaling on one another with what looked like long dowel rods while being screamed at by, well the nearest equivalent I could come up with was a squid on dry land, our trainer stomped over to one of our group—some tiny little yellowish thing with long floppy, pointed ears who’d had the temerity to actually turn its head when it looked—and smacked it upside one ear.

“Stop rubbernecking! There’s nothing over there you need to be worried about! I’m everything you need to worry about right here! Ain’t none of you pissants going to even LOOK at a training sword until you get your STRENGTH and DEXTERITY up!

“And how do we get our STRENGTH and DEXTERITY up? I’LL TELL YOU HOW,” he continued with a look that told us he knew we were too stupid to answer, “I’ll tell you how, you don’t get them up by some little fairy coming along and waving a wand, or out of some book, BECAUSE THERE AIN’T NO FREE LUNCH! YOU GET YOUR STRENGTH AND DEXTERITY UP BY ME RUNNING YOUR SORRY BUTTS INTO THE GROUND, THAT’S HOW! NOW TAKE OFF RUNNING AROUND THE CLEARING AND DON’T STOP UNLESS YOU DROP, AND WHEN YOU DROP, GET UP AND DON’T STOP UNTIL YOU DIE OR I TELL YOU TO STOP!”

When we all just stood there looking like we didn’t understand language, his face turned a really interesting shade of purplish green that reminded me of an under ripe eggplant. Even my anger faded as I watched with avid attention wondering if he would kill someone or explode, first.

Explode, it was.

“WHEN I TELL YOU TO MOVE, YOU MOVE! NOW MOVE IT, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!”

Being at the far end of the line and seeing as how the thought of escape coincided quite nicely with what he was screaming at us to do, I took off like a jackrabbit for the side of the clearing, the others falling in raggedly behind. When I reached the line of trees, I changed course and started circling the clearing, which was probably the size of a football field, but round. I didn’t dare slow down.

What followed was everything you might have expected it to be from the kind and gentle treatment we’d so far experienced of our trainer. We ran. We did not jog. We did not fast walk, we all out turkey-necked, asses and elbows, sweat pouring, heart pounding ran. We ran till people started dropping, and then the sergeant picked us up, (yes, I was one of the first to drop, sad to say) and literally threw us back onto our feet, and we ran some more. At one point, someone handed me one of the green test tube things and mimed drinking it, and I did.

Oh! Sweet, blissful fire burned down my throat like aged single-malt and exploded into a second wind.

And a third, and a fourth, and spaced ever more distantly apart came the minimized chimes of status notifications that let me know my DEXTERITY had increased.

Finally, FINALLY, he let us fall to the ground in a gasping heaving mass of melted flesh. Even though I’d had who knows how many STAMINA potions, my legs and even my arms felt like so much quivering jelly. I couldn’t suck in air fast enough, and the hunger I’d felt before entering this clearing I’d come to think of as hell had long since been replaced by roiling stomachs that every single one of us emptied as we ran. He hadn’t even let us stop when we puked, he just stood over us and screamed until we spat out the lasts few chunks and kept on.

I hated him with every atom of my dying flesh.

I’ll give him one thing, though, he ran the whole time, and not only kept up with all of us, he must have doubled our distance, running up and down the line all the while screaming in ears and pushing backs, but never stopping as long as we never got to stop. You gotta respect that in a sergeant; you don’t have to like it—or them—but you gotta respect it.

I still hated him.

When most of us had quit our puking and our lungs had sucked in enough air to allow our heads to clear, somewhat, he told us to line up, again.

“OK, from the looks of those of you who fell over your own feet every time your DEXTERITY went up, you need to learn how to keep your notifications minimized until looking at ‘em’s not going to cost you your life! The rest of you mental midgets that managed to somehow figure out how to take your fingers out of your noses and minimize a notice need to CHECK YOUR NOTICES RIGHT FREAKING NOW!”

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 CONSTITUTION

Weary smiles spread down the line as each of us saw the visual representation of all our suffering. 4 DEXTERITY, 2 STRENGTH, and one measly point in CONSTITUTION seemed like kind of a poor excuse for a reward for all that effort, but I was beginning to see the real genius of the SCHEMA system: In what I persisted in thinking of as “real” life, really my former life, you just kind of muddled along doing things that you hoped were the right things, but half the time weren’t, like hearing grains and margarine were good for your heart only to learn that red meat and lard were what actually lowered your cholesterol. You never really got to see many results of the effort you put in. Oh, sure, after months and months of hitting the gym three to five days every week, you got to see some definition, maybe lost a pant size or two, but this kind of instant reward type gratification could become seriously addicting.

“NOW!” Sergeant Asshole bellowed after giving us a few seconds to check our screens, “Those of you pissants who didn’t reach at least 5 in DEXTERITY, GET YOUR ASS BACK UP AND RUN UNTIL YOU DO!”

Shockingly, since we’d all put out about the same effort, and I’d reached 6 in DEX, a couple of our group did climb wearily to their feet and start running again, the kid among them. Crying again, I noticed.

“For the rest of you jokers, you managed to move whatever sorry excuses for locomotive limbs mother nature cursed your species with THE LOWEST AMOUNT to BARELY manage to do THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM to move on to training swords! Your mothers would be so proud!” His tone revealing that he obviously lied.

The elfess raised a shaky hand, but when she spoke, her voice was like a melody, like the sweetest music I’d ever heard. “S-sir? Are we going to get something for lunch? You can’t expect us to keep up this kind of physical work on an empty stomach, can you?” That last came out in a rather musical squeak as once more Sergeant Asshole’s face tasted the rainbow. When his words came out, though, far from being the shout we’d all expected, he almost whispered, speaking quietly like you would trying not to wake the baby.

“Lunch is it? You think we’re going to feed you lunch, do you? Maybe have a 7 course dinner served by liveried waiters with …” he paused, his face at last reaching the full range of the purple spectrum, as one we all leaned back, nobody wanted to hear his next words. “WITH FREAKING WHITE NAPKINS DRAPED OVER THEIR PUSSIFIED ARMS? IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK, TRAINEE?!?”

She began to cry.

“Oh. My. Sweet. Fucking. Deity. Of. Your. Choice!” he shouted, and then stopped speaking, took several deep breaths during which I could almost hear him mentally counting ten. “Did I not tell you, before we even started all of this?

“THERE.

IS.

NO.

FUCKING.

FREE.

LUNCH!”