I scanned the title blobs on the glowing pages, and found that they were primers on ‘early power growth’, ‘basic power boosting items’, and the less helpfully titled ‘The Dream’. I could feel the capital letters. I could also intuitively tell that reading through would take some time, and I didn’t really want to do it right this moment. We had been here, puttering around on this floor for a while now. If others were going to show up, it would probably be sooner rather than later. I wanted to take a swing at the boss room before anyone else showed up and we had to split the loot into smaller shares.

I stored the folder. It felt hefty, going into my inventory. Much more substantial than anything yet. It stood out, bright and clear in a way that everything else didn’t. I guess that will make it easy to identify magic items, if any of our future finds are not literally glowing. I also found that I could still read the meaning of the shapes on the pages, even with them stored away, but when I tried that my vision and hearing became blurry and indistinct. I guess I can only focus my senses inward or outward, not both. What really surprised me was that I felt just fine, even having stored such a significant item. I guess my power was expanding steadily as I used it.

“Do you think you are up for taking out the boss?” I asked, “He will probably be a single strong enemy, but is likely to have better loot.”

She paused from her candy genocide for a moment to consider.

“I think I am still not able to use my power,” she said, “it is… aching still. It is difficult to describe. Like a strained muscle.”

Wonderful. I eyed our golf clubs, wondering if they would be enough. Well, we were already bound to the crystal just upstairs, so what was the worst that could happen? And then my mind caught up with my line of reasoning and I remembered: Pain. An enormous amount of pain could happen. But on the other hand, this was literally my job.

Greed and curiosity eventually won out over fear in the absence of needing to worry about permanent physical harm. I grabbed my club and stood.

“I think it will be fine. We can stick to using the clubs, and we should be able to flee if things get totally out of hand.”

She considered it for a moment, nodded to me, and picked up her club as well.

“Okay,” I said, “here is the plan. I’ll try to keep the boss’ attention, and you keep an eye out for anything that stands out. Things which stand out on a boss are usually weak points, and you will probably be able to think more clearly than I will once the fight gets started.”

She nodded again, and we moved over to the dark wood door. I took a steadying breath, turned the handle, and pushed open the door. As the heavy wood swung inward, I caught sight of an absolutely massive dark bird, sitting on top of a magnificent desk. It turned its head to the side and looked at me with one of its eyes, and a game message slammed into my consciousness:

[NICOBAR PIGEON EXECUTIVE]

This bird was much darker than the smaller ones, black or navy blue, with longer feathers around its head forming a majestic mantle, and beautiful iridescent patches taking up most of its sides. It was also more than four feet tall, and potentially out-weighted me.

I took a single step into the room and, like lightning, it spread its gleaming, colorful wings and snapped them down, pushing me backwards and knocking the club from my hands with a massive burst of wind. I broke my fall with my hand, and groped around for my lost club. By the time I looked back up it was already halfway to me. Lindsey should still be behind me, but I was blocking the doorway, preventing her from doing anything. I reflexively brought my free hand up to shield myself, but I wasn’t sure what I could do against the massive bird’s rather sharp looking beak and talons. In a moment of mad desperation, I tried to shove it into my inventory.

Everything ground to a halt, the world taking on a grey cast. I could feel another presence with me, in the frozen time. It was a bright spark, but a simple one.

[DOMINATE WORKER PIGEONS] its mental voice boomed.

[PROTECT EXECUTIVE OFFICE] it cried directly into my head.

[REPEL INVADERS] it shouted toward the core of my being.

Well shit, I was definitely an invader. Maybe another angle then? Its workers were slain to the last, so maybe...

[New executive office] I tried to send, indicating my internal space.

I could feel attention being directed where I had indicated.

[FORMLESS, POORLY DECORATED] came the reply.

[Growth potential] I sent, trying to point out the potential upsides and grind down its resistance.

[SYNERGISTIC GROWTH POTENTIAL?] it asked, with a hint of interest, and I thought I saw where this was going.

[Collaborative global growth strategies using industry best practices] I sent, hating myself a little bit.

And just like that, I had a massive pigeon in my inventory. Time had apparently resumed at some point, though I had lost track. And then I heard the screaming. Something nearby was emitting the most blood chilling scream of horror and pain. Then I noticed that my throat was itchy.

It was me. I was screaming. My body gradually caught up with my mind and everything was awash in agony as I writhed around hoping that it would reduce the white hot pain burning its way into the deepest parts of me, places I had no idea even existed now hurt. It was as if my entire body was just a thin layer of meat stretched over a slowly expanding balloon, and if it expanded any further then I would tear.

I rolled around on the loose papers scattered on the floor, and recognized one of them. It was the page of notes I had taken. A page which should have been in my inventory. It seems that the thin layer that was me had already torn, and I was stricken by an intense wave of existential fear. Fear that if I didn’t get this under control, I may face more serious consequences than just pain in a game. I focused on my inner space, and tried to compress it, keep it under control, whatever I could do to stop further harm from coming to me.

To my absolute surprise, it seemed to help. I didn’t know what exactly I had done, but instead of bathing in molten iron, I was now merely being drizzled with a fine mist of battery acid over my full body open wound. I clutched my notes in one hand, and found my club with the other. Lindsey was crouched over me, saying something that I couldn’t quite make out in the haze of pain.

“I’ll be ok,” I tried to say. How successfully, only time will tell. I continued, “go in and take anything valuable. I’m done for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow, at the same time.”

She looked concerned, but she must have gotten at least part of the message because she moved further into the executive office. I groped around internally, trying to find a way to log out. In the same area as the feeling that let me log in, I found the corresponding feeling that I could leave as well, if I willed it. It came with a warning that once I did, I would not be able to return for a fixed period. That was fine with me. I logged out, and found myself dropped directly into normal dreams.

Well, maybe not normal. They were fever dreams where I was the giant pigeon, running team building exercises which mostly consisted of me bullying the worker pigeons into submission, or where I was giving a presentation to the DA Board of Directors, explaining the growth potential of this whole operation, only to realize that the pigeon executive was my partner, and handling half of the presentation. I woke up in the morning in a cold sweat, feeling hardly rested at all and unable to remember much of my dreams after I had logged out of Dreamshards.

I sat up, and my entire body ached. I don’t think I had gone through so much pain in my entire life, even adding it all together. Even adding in all the mental and social pain, if it could somehow be made physical, it just doesn’t come close. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

Way too late to back out now though. I got up, showered, and dressed for the day. It was only after my shower that I realized that my HUD was back, and apparently my augs were still recording. That was a relief. I stopped the recording, and chopped the video off after I woke up, and blurred the bit where I had looked down my starter pants and when I had changed. I skimmed the footage to ensure there were no parts with Lindsey that needed similar treatment, and thankfully there were not. I had managed to avert my gaze well enough and she had held her rags together until I had scrounged the new outfit.

I started to go over the footage in more detail, and noticed that any interactions with the game system did not show up in any way. Even the character creation menu, which had seemed to be visual once it had unfolded fully, was apparently not a true visual signal. Likewise, my entire back and forth with the Nicobar Pigeon Executive was absent. All that I could see was it rushing me, coming into contact with my outstretched hand and vanishing, and then me screaming and rolling around for a bit.

I reconstructed my notes in a text file, and added a few extra observations. Most notably that the entire experience on that office floor was a lot like a dream, with some themes being consistent, and a few seeming to come out of nowhere. I still wasn’t quite sure what a pigeon was, so I took a moment to request a few data searches. They were cleared quickly, and I looked over what I could find. Apparently the bluish birds were domestic pigeons, birds that lived primarily in large cities a few decades ago. At some point they went extinct in the wild, though I wasn’t able to find any causes in the sources I had access to. The nicobar pigeon was a distant relative, though an exotic one. It was apparently still around, though native to some island in the Chinese Union. I guess in hindsight the entire thing was pretty thematically consistent.

Thinking about pigeons drew my attention to the boss pigeon, which I had ‘defeated’ solely with a direct application of my power. Lindsey’s power seemed pretty solid too, and much more well suited to combat compared to mine. I wrote out all I could remember about our respective powers, how they seemed to expand with use, and how overuse seemed to cause consequences ranging from inconvenient to horrific. I would need to see players who had actually chosen the other two options to compare, but I was pretty happy with my report for the first day.

I looked inward to see if I was able to log back on, and found that I could not, that it would be roughly three more hours before I would be able. Interesting. I wondered how equipment is saved for people who didn’t have an inventory power. Would I still have my club and notes when I logged back in, because I had them in hand before I logged out?

Purely on reflex, I checked if I still had another golf club in my inventory, and to my surprise I found that I did. I could tell that I had the golf bag, and it had some clubs remaining in it, though I could not tell precisely how many. I didn’t have any papers or the pen, those having apparently hemorrhaged out when I stowed the boss pigeon. I checked on the pigeon and could feel its faint irritation at not having a proper office. Looking at the glowing folder I felt like I could probably read through, if I tried. Well, what the hell? Why could I still see my inventory?

I went over to my desk and found the silver pen I had been given by what's-his-name the head council for DA. I tried to store it, and it was like smashing an egg into a brick wall, except that my head was the egg.

When the pain subsided, and the dry heaving had stopped, I was left with a little spot of bile on my desk, and gratitude that I had been too nervous to eat anything substantial last night, and that I had not seen fit to have breakfast yet. I cleaned up my desk, and concluded that the informational aspects of powers must persist, sort of like how I could tell how long I had on my login timer, but that trying to use them outside the game was a capital B bad idea.

I finished up my report, sent it off, and tried to figure out breakfast. It took a few more data requests to find some decent instructions, but eventually I managed to make myself some passable scrambled eggs.

It was not long after I finished up my breakfast, as I was sitting in front of my window, enjoying the view and trying to shake my lingering fatigue, that I got the message that they needed me in the office to debrief. These people, ugh.