I woke in the afternoon, feeling mostly rested. I made my way to the kitchen and looked over the ingredients that had been stocked before I arrived. I didn’t really have any idea what to do with most of this stuff, but I did find some bacon and decided that a sandwich shouldn’t be too challenging.

Twenty minutes and a small pile of slightly burnt, unevenly cooked bacon later, and I was beginning to suspect that this cooking thing might require more time invested before it became worthwhile. Bacon was bacon though, and the resulting sandwich was pretty good with the addition of fresh lettuce and some butter. I was contemplating putting in a request for a cooking course when a priority email came in:

Will,

This is Jay Roberts, in charge of your new division. I didn’t see you at the meeting this morning. Team building and communication are important to success here at DA. I trust we won’t have any additional problems going forward.

I am not contacting you merely to reprimand you, however. I need you to focus your efforts on determining the mechanic which grants additional keys. This is your number one priority, above any other task or project. I mentioned this at the meeting, but I’ll repeat it here for your sake: The first person to recover a key will be getting a substantial bonus, and the tester who is able to write a set of procedures which can reproducibly generate keys will get an even larger one.

Regards,

Jay Roberts

Digital Arts, Dreamshards Division Head

Well, this would require a careful answer.

Mr. Roberts,

I understand. I will adjust my priorities as you have outlined. I am certain that you will find my future work to be satisfactory.

Respectfully,

William Bekker

There, that should be respectful and generic enough that he turns his baleful gaze elsewhere for the moment. I went into my notes file and added ‘get more keys’ to the top. It made sense. My fellow testers and I would be in serious trouble if we couldn’t figure that out in a month’s time.

The rest of the day passed without incident. I spent the time enjoying the view, working on old world building projects, and contemplating what I might do with all this free time. Being able to work in your sleep was life-changing. I’d need to develop a strategy to make good use of all my time now. I was on a timer, after all. I had two years at most to absorb as much benefit as possible from my current position, after which I would need to turn around and prove that my skills made me worth keeping around. I did not want to go back to the days of unemployment, and unsanctioned employment with the little grey market businesses that dotted the city.

As I sat reflecting, my alarm sounded. I reset my augs to their normal sleep settings, since I couldn’t use them in-game anyway. I felt a momentary twinge of pain shoot up my back. I twisted back and forth for a moment, to see if I could figure out what the problem was, but the pain had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Maybe I was just getting old? Well that sucks.

I finished preparing for bed, laid down, and opened the way. Without any flashy transition, I was standing next to the pink crystal at the top of the stairs. I was still holding the golf club and my notes, so I dropped both into my inventory for the moment.

Joe, in all his reptilian glory, was already standing nearby. Seeing the video clips from his perspective did not do a good job of preparing me. He must have been nearly nine feet tall, but hunched forward enough that he didn’t need to worry too much about his head hitting the ceiling. He had a long, muscular tail sticking out behind him to balance his posture. He looked more like a dinosaur than a lizardman, legs retrograde and the shape of his head calling to mind the raptors I had seen depicted in games. He had mesmerizing patterns of red, blue, and yellow scales on his outer arms and in splotches over his eyes, sweeping part of the way back over his head. The rest of his scales were a muted, greyish-green. It would have been a lot more intimidating if he hadn’t been wearing the starter grey outfit, though sized up to fit him.

At that thought, I checked myself over quickly. The damage to my grey shirt (as well as my body) was gone, and I was still wearing my blue jeans.

“Magic pants,” rumbled the sauran titan in front of me.

“Magic pants,” I agreed.

“The others are going to be looking for secret compartments like the one you found, trying to time respawns, and build up rudimentary drop tables,” he continued.

“Good,” I said, “that leaves us free to pursue more interesting things. I’m going to read my magic folder thing while we wait on Lindsey, and then we are going to see what we can break.”

Joe nodded his assent, “I’ll be on the first floor. I’m going to go test if cooking things works.” He left with a strange glint in his eye, heading down the stairs three at a time, leaving sizable gouges in the concrete surface.

I focused inwards, my attention landing on the folder I now knew to be not actually glowing. Now that it had been pointed out to me, I could actually tell that the light it shed was not light, but something else. It was almost like warmth, but a sense of weight instead of heat. How odd that my mind had labeled it a glow and moved on so seamlessly when I hadn’t been paying attention.

I tried to focus on the pages while they were still in my inventory, but I could feel a heavy sort of resistance. It would probably be easier if I just pulled them out. The entire folder appeared in my hand without any effort at all, and I started to read the first page.

‘Early Power Growth,’ the heading seemed to say. I read on, finding the warning that others wouldn’t be able to read if I continued, and I did so. I could feel something happen, though I wasn’t sure if it was a seal breaking, as I had expected. It was more like the page was clearer in my hand now, though the text still appeared as blurry spots. As I read, I seemed to automatically skim over the first two sections below the warning. I went back and tried to read again, and my eyes just automatically slid down until I was at the third section again. I took a breath, and tried a third time. I could feel myself trying to skip past, but I persisted. After a few seconds of struggle, I started to get a sense of why this was happening. Those sections weren’t relevant to me, so the blobs just translated into ‘not relevant’ or ‘useless’ and my eye automatically continued past them. Those sections probably covered the other two character creation options. It was a shame that we’d need to find two more of these folders to get at whatever information was hidden there, but there didn’t seem to be anything more I could do about it. I moved on to the third section.

It was a pretty barebone guide to making my power better:

‘Through stressful exertions, your strength will grow. Take care to pace yourself, for too great an exertion may lead to great pain or even injury.’ Yep. Thanks for the timely warning.

‘Precise applications and perception may be improved through ongoing practice. Take care to remain focused or you may improve only reflexes, and not novel and deliberate usage.’ Practice to become more skilled. Great.

‘Contemplate each novel use to discover the next. Your path broadens through introspection.’

I took a moment to focus on that last concept, just to be certain. It was definitely ‘introspection’ and not just thinking about the power and how to use it. I guess it makes sense, since the game apparently picked this power to suit me personally. I would need to spend some time thinking about myself if I wanted to improve here, and I could even claim it as work hours. What a weird game.

At least that last bit was useful information. My superiors might not like sharing the info with outsiders, but this was basic enough that I could probably get away with sharing it with Lindsey.

I started reading the next page, and I found it already bound to me. Looks like reading any of them bound them all to me.

At that point, another player logged in. One moment, I was alone in the vestibule, and the next I was standing near a tall elven man, a rapidly fading portal of the not-light behind him. He had pale skin with long tapered ears, cold blue eyes, and short brown hair. He scowled at me, and turned away. I returned to my reading, but didn’t make any progress before I felt a strange jolt and I knew, somehow, that Lindsey was about to log in. A moment later she appeared, her entire body aglow with energy. I took note that the login effect was different, though I didn’t have a hypothesis for why yet.

The elven man turned to her and started speaking rapidly. She responded in kind, though it seemed more argument than conversation. I didn’t recognize the language at all. I wondered momentarily if there was some way to send messages using the game interface, to get around language issues. I had been able to when trying to capture the pigeon boss, but I didn’t want to test it here and potentially interrupt someone of so much higher a standing -

“No.” the word rang out, laced with power. It wasn’t shouted, but spoken with a deliberate firmness that left no room for question. My previous line of thought was cut off at the root, leaving me with that awkward feeling of confusion, when you totally lose track of what you were doing and just can’t figure it out again. The elven man was also standing silently, with a distant look in his eyes. Apparently I was not suffering alone, though he seemed to be much worse off, being the apparent target of the outburst.

“Thank you again for your kind offer, but I will not be needing your assistance,” she said, her tone biting. She turned to me, “Will, we are leaving.”

Lindsey moved down the stairs with purpose, not quite fleeing. I followed, not entirely sure what was going on. I stored away the folder I had in my hand, unsure what I had been doing with it. The moment I flexed my power and the folder disappeared, my head cleared. Had Lindsey picked up some sort of mind-affecting item from last night’s boss loot?

We arrived at the first landing, and I could hear the roar of Joe’s flames even behind the closed door.

“My coworker was expecting to join us. Is that alright with you?” I asked.

She glanced up at the ceiling, then sideways at me.

“That is fine,” she said, a wry smile forming as she spoke, “I rejected my acquaintance’s offer because I despise him, and my burning desire to spend more time alone with you and in situations where both of our clothing has been destroyed is something I am willing to set aside.”

I froze, momentarily flustered beyond the ability to speak. I could feel the heat in my face. Before I could say anything, though, Lindsey’s smile dropped and she spoke again.

“Will, I am joking. Are all Americans wound so tightly? I admit it was somewhat crass, but surely you make such jokes from time to time when you are with friends?”

Her question seemed honest, so I would do my best to give her more than the expected, surface level answer. I held my hand to the side of my head, out of my field of view. From the side, I pointed to my eyes and then tapped next to my ear, and said, “No, my friends and I would never make a joke like that. It would be socially irresponsible to joke around about those subjects.”

My delivery was a little bit wooden, as it was meant to be. It was true that I would personally not make jokes like that, but that was more down to my own issues than to loyalty to the social order.

Lindsey cocked her head to the side for a moment, before a look of dawning realization appeared briefly on her face.

“Ah, I understand completely,” she said, “Please forgive my insensitivity.”

“It’s fine,” I said, “I would prefer if we could avoid the subject of relationships entirely, if it’s possible, as it’s sort of a sore subject for me.”

“In that, we are the same. You may consider me chastised,” she said.

The stairwell was silent, I realized. The sounds of roaring flame had stopped, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Joe alone to ‘cook’ any longer than necessary.

“No problem, but we should probably get moving. I wouldn’t want to leave Joe, the coworker I mentioned, alone for too long.”