I wonder what it is about humans, or at least about this human, that allows us to feel joy in our own misfortune? Thinking back, I had to admit that I came by it honestly. Dad’s drinking cost him not only his life, but the better part of his livelihood, as well. And oh, didn’t he just love to talk about it to anyone who would listen. Not that he ever admitted that it was the liquor or the cocaine, but he found such a fierce dark joy reliving every slight from every boss. Mom was just the same in her own way.

I swear my mother derived pleasure from being physically ill. For most of her married life, we all had to live without regular medical care; we fell into that crack where we were too well off to qualify for government health care, but too poor to pay for it or to afford insurance. Dad, for all his faults, worked all the time, but almost never in any job that provided benefits. He was a construction worker and worked as an independent contractor. He was good at it, but his drinking and drugging kept him constantly switching jobs, so he never got paid what his coworkers made. Naturally, that made him angry which made him drink more.

Mom worked hard too as a homemaker raising me and four brothers. When she felt well enough, at least. To a kid’s perception, it seemed that she was always sick. Never sick enough to get treated at the ER, but too sick to manage day-to-day with any sort of consistency. Don’t make any noise, Mommy’s got a headache, you’ll have to cook dinner for your little brothers, Mommy doesn’t feel good.

Friends and neighbors didn’t really take her seriously, and I think that upset her more than the fact that she was sick. She would become incensed if she heard that someone had called her a hypochondriac, and she would rage about it for days on end. Many of her friends valued her, though. She had an encyclopedic understanding of hundreds of medical conditions and the affordable folk remedies to treat them. They all came to her for advice when little Johnny couldn’t hold anything down, or little Suzie wouldn’t sleep, but nobody really believed she was sick until Dad died and she was finally poor enough for Medicaid.

Once she was able to go to her first appointment with a primary care physician, the floodgates opened. It seemed like every other day she was going to a different specialist for diagnosis or treatment. All that time, she had really been sick, and now she was able to prove it.

And she gloried in it.

She didn’t have any serious illnesses, or not immediately fatal, at least, but you name a chronic condition and she had it. Diabetes, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, the list goes on. I swear she enjoyed her bad days when things flared up more than her good ones. It was truly ironic that in the end none of that killed her; she died of a broken heart.

So, when the gold and, following that, the silver veins ran completely out before I was ready to stop mining them, I finally understood how she must have felt. I don’t know how long I had chipped away at those rock walls, picking up the chunks that fell increasingly frequently, but all the while I expected this chunk of ore to be the last. Nothing good lasts forever, and when they did run out, I felt like my pessimism had been vindicated.

What is it about we humans that gives us such perverse joy in our own misfortune?

So, there I sat in a dark mine shaft reliving these morbid memories while I ate my grilled rat feeling equal parts cheated and happy that I had known all along that it was too good to last. I had to admit that they’d held out for a good long while, I had two slots for each precious metal completely filled with both kinds of precious metals. I don’t know how long, exactly, but sometime between the gold and the silver, I reached a point where my STAMINA bar just refused to fill, and I collapsed right there in the shaft into a deep dreamless sleep. When I woke, I woke almost in a panic. What if everyone else has finished their training and nobody is there when I go back?

I jumped up, all fumble footed with a sleep hangover and stumbled my way to the entrance of the mine shaft. I expected it to be early morning, but when I got there, it was as if I had only been underground for a few minutes. The sun was in exactly the same place as I remembered when I checked the last time. I even reviewed the video of my RECORD. It was as if the sun stood still for me.

He did tell me there was no time limit. What if that means, there is no time here in this place that is not really a place?

More philosophical wonderings that would lead me nowhere. It’s the dark, I thought, pragmatically, it’s making me morbid. There were gems still waiting to be plucked from the rock, so I turned and reentered the mine, once more.

As I was walking back to the end of the shaft with the prismatic lantern, I happened to glance at the area that I’d mined for tin and saw something odd. Odd in that I hadn’t noticed it when I’d been there before. I could see the tiny chrome sparkles of tin—how I’d ever had any trouble finding the vein seemed incomprehensible to me now—but just off to one side, ran another vein that looked the same, yet different. Still sparkling like chrome in the white light cast by the lantern, but, I don’t know, duller, somehow. Without thinking, I equipped my pick and struck right in the middle of that river of ore. With only that one strike, a good-sized chunk of ore dropped to the ground.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have discovered a lead deposit!

Lead, huh? Don’t they use lead for bullets? I bet it would make great ammo for my slingshot!

I went to work on the deposit, and sure enough, as soon as I’d hit 40 chunks of ore, it played out. 40 must be some arbitrary limit that SCHEMA’s set for the training mine, I thought as I stretched muscles sore from the slightly hunched stance I’d had to take to reach the lead. Again, regretting the lack of a watch, I looked towards the mine entrance to see if I any time had passed outside. To my surprise, I saw someone just exiting the darkness of the forest at the head of the valley.

I hurried to the entrance and shaded my eyes with one hand, and then waved as I saw the kid trotting around the rocks and boulders that seemed to grow like weeds throughout the valley. I was inordinately happy to see a friendly face; I felt like a shipwrecked survivor who sees a boat in the distance.

“Have you started mining, yet?” He called when he reached hailing distance, “I was going to skip the SMITHING part, but I realized I would probably need it to make arrowheads.”

“Have I started?” I asked in shock, “What are you talking about? I’ve been here at least a day and a night!”

He stumbled to a stop an arm’s length away and gave me a wide-eyed look of incredulity. “You’ve got to be kidding me! I just barely finished getting my WOODWORKING SKILL and came directly here! The sun’s been up the whole time!”

We stood there staring at each other, each trying to decide if the other was taking the piss, but I finally shrugged and said, “I’m not joking at all, but if you stay here long enough, you’ll see for yourself. Come on, then, I’ll show you the best place to start so you don’t have to fumble around trying to tell the ore from the rock.” Then, I turned around and he followed me into the mine.

After I got him started on the tin I wonder if SCHEMA will grow the lead, gold, and silver back for him? I went back down the shaft past the smoldering remains of my cookfire to where the gems were supposed to be found. Just like every other time I’d arrived at a new zone, I couldn’t see any difference in the rock of the shaft walls and the place where a gem might be found, but just like before, enough chipping away here and there, and I began to find pay dirt.

The bounty varied. I was initially encouraged with the first stone to drop:

CONGRATULATIONS! You have discovered a flawed sapphire!

But, mostly, I found low-value semi-precious stones like garnets and opals. I found one more sapphire, this one didn’t say flawed, but it didn’t say flawless, either, a couple of flawed rubies, and one flawed diamond before the area apparently played out. That’s when I noticed the sound that I’d been subconsciously hearing for a while.

I’d just admitted to myself that the area was probably done. I was taking a swig from my water bottle and I heard it. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

It’s just the sound of the kid’s pick echoing off the end of the shaft, I thought at first, but it came again, a little louder. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. BANG!

I jumped with a surge of adrenaline and snatched up my pick. I peered into the darkness but couldn’t make anything out. There were no more lanterns in that direction, and I’d just assumed that the shaft ended not much farther on.

Ass-U-me, I chided myself for the amateur mistake and quickly unhooked the lantern and held it out for a better look. Nothing. Wait … what’s that? I moved cautiously forward half expecting to find nothing, half afraid I was wrong. I took a few more cautious steps, trying not to step on any rock chips.

Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

I straightened up, without realizing that I’d fallen into a defensive crouch when it turned out to be the light gleaming dully off the unfinished end of the shaft. I moved the lantern (which had taken on a mundane yellow-white as soon as I’d taken off its hook) slowly from one side of the shaft to the other, but there was nothing there. Just the end of the shaft.

Tap-tap.

Could there be another mine shaft on the other side? What if there was a cave-in and someone’s been trapped down here? But the wall didn’t look like rubble from a fall, it looked like what it had to be: the unfinished rock at the end of a mine shaft.

Tap-tap-tap.

My skin crawled and my hairs stood on end. I don’t care what it is, I decided, I’m through, and I’m leaving.

Just as I turned, and my body came between the wall and the hand holding the lantern, I saw that something that I’d seen before. A glint of light. Not from some bright ore reflecting the light, but a source of light, all its own. Carefully, I squatted down without taking my eyes off it until I felt the lantern touch the ground. I jiggled it a little to make sure it was sat firmly on the ground, resisting the temptation to look. Grasping my pick in both now free hands, I moved careful steps closer.

It was a light, but not like anything I could think to compare it with. It was like a dotted line, perhaps six inches long, and it ran ruler straight just where the end of the shaft met the wall. I studied it for a while, but the quality of the light never changed. Whatever cast the light, it wasn’t a lantern, it had to be something man-made, like an electric light, it was too steady with never a flicker. Cautiously, I took my right hand away from my pick and let it hover bare inches away. No heat.

That’s when I realized that the tapping had stopped, and an involuntary shiver ran up my back and out the top of my head.

Chiding myself for being a baby, and not even a normal baby! I’m not afraid of the dark, I’m afraid of the light! I moved a careful finger to lightly touch the broken, faintly glowing line. It felt cool to the touch, dry and smooth, not like the gritty, sometimes damp rock from which the mine had been carved. It was a hair-thin line of dots and dashes, but I could clearly feel the difference in texture as I worried my finger over it back and forth like one does with a scab. I wondered if it was some new kind of ore, some exotic thing that had never existed on Earth.

There’s one way to find out, I decided after contemplating that, and I choked up with both hands on the pick and swung. Sparks flew as the tip of the pick skidded across the face of the rock, not penetrating even to the slightest degree. I backed off a step, frowning in thought, but there was really no other option, so I readjusted my grip and gave a mighty heave.

I must have hit at it from every conceivable angle. I hit it with all my strength, I tapped it lightly, I even scraped the tip across it from side to side, and up and down. Nothing. Then, right when I’d decided that it was a mystery that would remain unsolved, I had a thought.

Holding the pick near the head in my left hand, I felt in my chest where my MANA pool lay. The frustration I’d been feeling at not being able to penetrate the rock—or the mystery—balked my efforts at first, but I willed my MEDITATION SKILL to become active, and concentrated on my breathing, and tried again.

Slowly at first, but then in a smooth, steady flow, MANA pooled in the palm of my hand and flowed like a skin over the head of the axe. When it was completely covered with the blue-white glow, I stopped pulling, but kept rubbing, willing it into the rough iron of the pick. Once it had absorbed all of the MANA, I gripped the pick in both hands, aimed, and swung.

CRASH! A long and thin, flint-like flake sheered off just at the bottom end of the line, leaving more of it exposed, but no ore fell. I redoubled my efforts chipping away again at the bottom, the top, and to the side, but in the end all that happened was that the line now stretched in its curiously dotted way from floor to roof, right at the edge of the wall, for all the world like light peeping into a dark hallway around the edge of a closed door. What if it is a door? And so I followed that thought with action, this time concentrating where the rocky wall met the top of the shaft.

I had to renew the MANA in my pickaxe twice before managing to prove that the lines did not completely circle the end-wall of the shaft, it was only the one line, well, I thought of it as one, where the side wall met the end shaft. It didn’t run the whole distance from floor to ceiling. There was a kind of bulge in the end wall near the middle, and the line extended below and above the bulge, but not along its edge.

In the end, I just sat there staring at it, as much a mystery now as before I’d begun.

“Tom?” The sudden reminder that there was another living being in the mine with me was a shock to my system.

“Here!” I shouted back, without thinking, and just as quickly wished that I had not.

Why am I acting like this is some great secret that I must keep? I wondered grumpily.

“Kid…er, Rob, come see what I found. Maybe you can make sense of it,” I said, chastising my own reluctance with volume, as I stood brushing rock chips from my pants.

“Holy Bethesda Batman!” the kid said cryptically when he arrived. “It’s a freakin’ rendering error!”

“I didn’t understand anything you just said. Can you maybe speak English?”

Kid didn’t listen to me, it was like I wasn’t even there. He walked to the end of the shaft in a daze and ran his hand over the places where the line encircled the shaft. He touched it like he’d found diamonds, like Indiana Jones discovering the Holy Grail.

“When they make a video game that has a lot of areas, maybe like an underground dungeon area, sometimes the dungeons are too big for a developer to plot out every pixel—uh—every square inch, so they make a program that sort of prints pieces of wall, like putting them up with a rubber stamp. A lot of time, there’s no—I don’t know how to describe it—the different pieces don’t communicate with each other. One studio, Bethesda, is so well known for putting things in their games that don’t communicate with the other pieces, you have, like, chairs that look like their growing out of walls, or trees growing half in and half out of a building.

“So, that’s not exactly what this is, but it made that come to mind. What this is, is when you have a lot of pieces that are alike, you know, random rock wall next to random rock wall, the program just stamps them out bam! bam! bam! And most of the time, it’s OK; except for the boring sameness, it does the trick and makes a long line of rock wall.

“What happened here, though, is that the mine shaft jinked when it should have janked.” At my frustrated glare he amended, “If the shaft had continued to drop smoothly like it had been, nothing would have happened, but here it met the end of the shaft, but the end wall is shaped kind of funky, and the square part of the side wall met the rounded part of the end wall, and it didn’t fit all the way around. See, on the other side, there’s no bulge, so the wall meets it straight on, and you don’t see the matrix behind it.”

“That’s all well and good,” I said, after I’d absorbed what he’d told me, “except for we’re not in a video game.” Yeah, I admit that last part was needlessly pedantic, but I was feeling a bit patronized at the moment.

Give him credit, the kid didn’t come right back with a snappy answer. He actually took the time to think about it before he finally said, “Well, I had this one friend who used to like to wind everyone up by claiming that we were all digital characters in a cosmic computer simulation. That nothing was ‘real’ like we think of real, that we were all just the imagination of an incredibly advanced artificial intelligence.”

Now it was my turn to stop and think. “That’s actually one I’ve heard before. We used to have a lot of hurry up and wait time in jobs I had, you know, before. Anyway, when you get a bunch of guys sitting around doing nothing, you’ll always have at least one who fancies himself a philosopher. So, yeah, I’ve heard that one before. It’s been a few years, and what with missing most of my memories and all, I can’t remember the details, but as I recall, scientists figured out some way to disprove that.”

The kid nodded along, “I think I remember hearing that too, but there’s another possibility. You remember when I told you this was like stories I’d read, well, some of those stories were about people who found themselves trapped in a video game. They’d gone in with a VR—uh, a virtual reality—setup and, I don’t know, different things, lightning struck, or some mad scientist bent on world domination, what have you, but something happened, and they got trapped in a game that was so real they couldn’t tell it from reality. Maybe we’re trapped in some game we don’t remember playing?”

“Except, I never play video games. Well, Solitaire, but nothing ever like this. I can’t imagine that anyone would ever be able to talk me into one of these. Not even love could bend me that much!”

We shared a laugh, and he answered, “A subset of those ‘trapped in the game’ ones is where people have an accident, like a car wreck, or someone shot them in the head, and they hook them up to a VR world because it’s the only way they can communicate, or have any kind of quality of life.”

“But wouldn’t I know if I was in a car wreck?”

“Not necessarily, what if you were just driving along, and BOOM! you’re in a coma and can’t wake up.”

I chewed on that for a while. “Okay, I’ll give you that, but still, it doesn’t sit right with me. For one thing, there’s the whole humanity facing a massive die off thing…”

“What?” he interrupted me, “die off? What are you talking about?”

I put out my hands, palms out to calm him down, not that anything I had to tell him was what you’d call calming information, but I didn’t want to have to deal with hysterics. “I forget that I’m apparently the only one slow enough to make SCHEMA answer a bunch of stupid questions.” I kept up my hushing movements at his glare, but at this point, I’d take anger over fear. Heck, that might as well be my own personal motto.

“SCHEMA let it slip—if a system that’s like a computer can make a slip, that is—and told me that it expected 75% of all humans to die during this transition.”

The kid looked a little stunned by the numbers, but not near as stunned as I’d expected him to be. Not near as stunned—or angry—as I’d been, for that matter. Taking a deep breath, he responded.

“Yeah, that’s a feature in some of the stories I’ve read, too. Not the trapped in the video game ones, though. The ‘welcome to your new world’ ones.”

“Kind of like this one,” I said.

“Yeah. Kind of like this one.”