I don’t know how long the kid and I sat there at the end of the mine shaft that wasn’t a mine shaft, but for some time. For a while, I just sat there and stared at that line of light and tried to absorb what he had told me about computer graphics. I might not be all that literate where video games were concerned, but I’m not exactly stupid.

Finally, after sitting there not speaking for so long, the kid said, “You know, this doesn’t mean anything, really. That Alonso combat trainer ork guy said that was some kind of instance, didn’t he? Or was that you? Someone said it was like an instance in a game where you go somewhere else away from the rest of the players who might be in another place that looks exactly the same, but you’re not in the same place.” I could tell he was trying hard not to sound too technical for my benefit, but it was starting to get on my nerves.

“Yeah, I remember something about that, I thought it was SCHEMA told me before I got there, so I may have told you. It’s not important, though. What is important is that if we have been sent into one of these instances, and this is all happening in a computer, then that means that you and I are computer generated.” I looked at him to see if he understood, but I couldn’t tell in the low light cast by the lantern I’d stolen off the gem wall. “The real question is: So, we’re just digital parts of a computer program right now. When this ends, will we go back to real, physical bodies, or will we continue as a computer program forever? Do we even have physical bodies, anymore, and if so, where are they? Did SCHEMA really take over our world”—thinking about the elves, gnomes, and the Blue Man—“or worlds, or did they snatch us up and bring just our consciousness here?”

“Yeah, that is the question, isn’t it?” He finally agreed, “I don’t think we can argue that we’re not really here. I mean, we are definitely digitized copies of our real selves right now. This,” he indicated the line of light, “pretty much proves that. The only question left is if that’s all we are forever.” Then after a thoughtful moment he added, “I started thinking about this when SCHEMA explained that we could respawn after dying. I mean, I guess magic could account for that, but usually I’ve always thought of that as a computer thing, not something generally associated with magic or fantasy worlds.”

“Not that either of us are experts on how magic really works,” I pointed out, “all we know about these things are what we’ve read in books. Books made up by people.”

“Yeah.”

We sat there for a little while longer, but for the first time since coming into the mine, I started feeling claustrophobic, like the walls were starting to close in on me.

“So, where are you in your mining? Do you still need to do some more?”

“Nah, I got my MINING SKILL just before I came down here. I went ahead and mined a little gold and a little silver—you took the lantern from the gems, so I wasn’t sure where to go for that, that’s why I came looking for you, originally. The only reason I did that much was because I was waiting for you. I don’t think I’m into this mining thing as much as you are; I just wanted to get the skill so I can make arrowheads and swords, and I got enough for that.”

“Well,” I said, standing up and dusting off my homespun leggings, “I’m ready to head back to the CRAFTING area if you are.”

We walked up to the entrance of the mine, then along the still-glowing path back to the CRAFTING area in silence, both caught up in our thoughts. I knew that neither one of us had enough information to answer any of the questions we still had, so there wasn’t much use in dwelling on it. When I was a kid living with an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother, I’d learned to take all my negative emotions and stuff them down until they turned into anger. I still let things tick me off a lot more than was probably healthy, but I didn’t think not dwelling on unanswerable questions was the same thing. I just didn’t have any way to understand what was going on, so I felt it wouldn’t be a productive use of my time and energy to spend a lot more time worrying about it until I did. If I got more answers, I’d revisit the questions, but until then, whether I was real or Memorex, I had what passed for a life to get on with.

Just before we reached the end of the path, though, I stopped the kid (I was never going to be able to think of him as Rob, I guess) with a hand on his arm. “I don’t know where we’ll be when we leave here. I said, with a nod of the head towards the clearing, “I don’t know if I’ll go back to Texas and you’ll go back to New York, or if we’ll both come out somewhere else. I don’t know if we can stay together or if SCHEMA will separate us, but if we can figure out a way to keep in touch, I think maybe we should. We can compare notes and see if between the two of us, we can answer some of these questions.”

The kid stared down at his feet for a second and then replied, “I think that’s a good idea. If this were a game,” he shot me a side-eye and one corner of his mouth twitched showing he knew he was yanking my chain, “I’d say add me to your friend’s list. I don’t know how or even if we can find a way to stay in touch if we both go back to where we started, but my whole name is Rob Colditz. Maybe we can find each other at least to send letters or emails or something.”

I held out my hand like we were just meeting. “Nice to meet you, Rob Colditz; I’m Tom Nobody, though I think I’m just always going to call you ‘kid’ and there’s not much either of us can do about it.”

He chuckled at that and shook my hand, and we entered the clearing together.

Nothing had changed in the CRAFTING area, as far as either of us could tell. The two elf guys which seemed pretty much joined at the hip were now over in the WOODWORKING area and the elf lady had taken their place in the COOKING area with both gnomes. The only one still in the same area was the Blue Man. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground working a large needle through a skin, still at the TAILORING station. Maybe he just wanted to be a tailor and wasn’t worried about any of the other SKILLs.

Nobody looked up as we reentered the glade, though the Blue Man trainer gave us a smile and waved us over. We both walked that way.

“I see you found each other at the mine,” He said agreeably, “Each of you pick a spot,” he indicated an area near the side of the smelter/forge, “and lay out your ores so we can take a look at what you brought back.”

The kid moved to a spot farther away, leaving the spot nearest the smelter to me. I went to lay out my ore, but then I stopped and turned to the trainer. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I just keep thinking of you and the other guy like you who took COMBAT training with us,” I nodded over towards the guy in the TAILORING section, “as just Blue Men, but I’m guessing that’s not what you call yourselves.” I was kind of hesitant, almost stammering. The political climate in the US that I’d grown up in had become a minefield of offended, and I never knew how to go about stuff like this.

The trainer didn’t seem to be upset, though, he just laughed. “Blue Men, I see you’re a literal type of Human. We call ourselves the Arcepti, and indeed the ones colored as we two are called Blues. While many Arcepti are blue, our people started out as primary colors, Reds, blues, and yellows. As you can imagine, over the millennia, our home world has become like a rainbow. We even have some pinks, like the two of you.”

My mouth dropped open at that.

“I’m sorry, was that rude? I am not well versed in Humans, so I ask your forgiveness if I have offended you.”

“No,” I answered with a chuckle, “you just surprised me. On Earth, which is what we call the name of my planet, we generally say that people colored like me and the kid, here, are white, though I guess pink could be equally as descriptive. Pink, though, is thought to be kind of a feminine thing. Not, I guess that colors are masculine or feminine, but small female children often express a preference for the color.”

“Ah, I see. Yes, I understand how that might cause some offence. It seems that under SCHEMA, COMBAT is often valued over other SKILLs and ABILITIES, and COMBAT is often seen as primarily the province of the males of the species—though under the way the SCHEMA system works, the genders have become equalized. Females with high STRENGTH and DEXTERITY scores can easily out fight a male with low scores.”

“I met a few female marines who didn’t need SCHEMA to out fight a man, but I’m glad to hear that women can finally be equal across the board,” I laughed as I moved over to my spot and began to spill the various ores out of my INVENTORY.

“In the interest of keeping you both busy,” the Arcepti said after seeing what we’d each brought back, “I think I’ll start Rob out smelting tin in the large smelter, while you, Tom, can begin with your gold in one of the smaller crucibles,” here he indicated a small stone cylinder mostly buried in the ground near the larger beehive smelter. “First, though, both of you need to learn how to process the metals out of the rock that surrounds them.”

For tin, you apparently need a lot of elbow grease, and he put the kid to work using a pumice stone mortar and pestle—what we in Texas would call a molcajete—to grind the ore into a powder that could then be melted over a wood fire or in the large smelter. For the gold, he had me break up the chunks into smaller pieces and then showed me how to put some borax in with it to bind the impurities so that I could skim them off once the mixture melted.

“You can also use ground glass, if you don’t have a ready supply of borax,” he said, “or you can use different kinds of acids. In BEGINNER TUTORIALs, we try to keep things as primitive as possible so that you don’t require the trappings of civilization to CRAFT. Technology as you understand it will have undergone a change on your planet, but the things that were there will still mostly be there, so finding glass should be no big problem if you live near a city. Now that you have the mining skill, it will make finding borax and most other salts and minerals necessary for FORGING much easier. You’ll be able to spot them in their natural setting like you were able to see the veins of metals in the surrounding rock. At first, you’ll only be able to spot areas that contain larger concentrations of the minerals, but after you get more experienced with it, you’ll be able to spot even trace amounts, if that’s all you have nearby.”

The rest of the time in gaining my FORGING SKILL passed mostly in preparing the various ores for the actual extraction procedures. Just like in many things, getting your materials ready to process was the larger part of the job. Compared to that, the actual melting of the metals and pouring the resulting bullion into molds went fairly quickly.

Next, he showed me how to make a simple gold ring in a mold, how to use a graduated metal rod he called a mandrel to size the ring, and how to draw the gold into wire to make another, thicker ring that he called a bezel that was a simple setting for a stone.

“Unfortunately, I cannot show you how to cut and polish your gems for setting. For that, you’ll need to purchase the ENGRAVING SKILL or find an ENGRAVING tutor to teach you, as working with gems falls under that SKILL. If you like, however, I can show you how to rough polish an uncut stone and set it in a ring. You can always cut the bezel and resize and reattach it later if you cut the stone.”

The time passed quickly, though the sun never appeared to move. We stopped for a meal catered by the trainees in the COOKING section, and by the end of the section, I’d gained some more stat points[i],[ii],[iii], and my ABILITY[iv], my SKILL,[v] and had a gold ring set with an uncut garnet, a silver clasp for a cloak set with an uncut sapphire, several ounce bars of the leftover gold and silver, a bronze dagger[vi] an iron dagger, and a nice selection of lead balls for my slingshot.

The kid made himself a bronze dagger as well as several iron arrowheads, and we decided to go together to the COOKING section for no other reason than our stomachs were ready for more food.

[i] CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

[ii] CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

[iii]CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

[iv] CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the ABILITY FORGING

[v] CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the SKILL SMITHING

[vi] CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the ABILITY ALLOYS