I adjusted my metaphysical grip on the login function, reaching for the deeper mechanism rather than the exposed interface I had been using so far. I hadn’t yet had a chance to see what I could do with this, and now seemed like as good a time as any.

The process was initially uncomfortable, like trying to touch your own eye, but the discomfort passed quickly. The first input, which I suspected controlled what avatar was spawned, was disturbingly easy to direct to the concept of myself. It felt natural, like pointing back to me was the default input, which was reasonable. What made it interesting was that there was a certain specific level of vagueness necessary in the process. Too specific, and I’d be pointing at my heart or my pancreas or some specific spiritual component instead. Too vague and I wouldn’t be pointing to myself at all, but to my general area. And yet, the target for that input seemed to naturally slide into that exact correct level of precision. Grooves worn into the spiritual medium? Default values for the arguments passed to the function? Questions for later. Along with questions about whether I (and by extension, anyone with a key) could spawn and pilot arbitrary avatars.

I ran into trouble trying to direct the second input anywhere at all. I fell back on the pathway provided by the outward interface for that part, which seemed to work alright. There was a rush of essence, and I was suddenly standing in front of the pink crystal near the central tower. I was also still in my hospital bed. Apparently, it was an intentional feature of the interface that put the user to sleep, not part of the avatar creation process itself. I sat there and stood there for a few seconds, not moving either of my bodies for fear of triggering some kind of vertigo, when I noticed that my hand, on the other side, was somewhat transparent. I couldn’t see my muscles or bones inside, but I could see the sky behind it. Had I done something wrong? I shifted a bit to see if the rest of me was transparent, finding the vertigo to be manageable so long as only one of my bodies moved, when the whole avatar unraveled, leaving me in only one place once more.

Had I not used enough essence to create the avatar? Was there some other important thing happening with the interface that didn’t trigger properly when I tried to do it myself? I reached to try again, and suddenly remembered the login cooldown. Damn it, had I messed up my chance tonight with my experiment? To my surprise and delight, I found that I had not. The feeling that was normally present which gave me a general sense of how long was left on the cooldown was totally absent. So long as I didn’t inadvertently trigger whatever caused that, I was good to experiment a bit.

My next attempt, again trying to manually direct the second input, went strangely. I thought I had properly directed the second parameter, working from the memory of where it was pointing during my last attempt, but it slipped out of my control just as my essence surged out to invoke my avatar. I had pushed harder this time, to ensure I didn’t create something so ephemeral again. This time, my avatar appeared in the middle of a hospital, much like the one I was stuck in. The surroundings were colorless and strangely fuzzy. I reached out to steady myself against a nearby counter, when it broke apart in my hand.

I slipped and fell, crashing down through the floor, which turned to dust. I slid down the garbage chute, trying to grab for any handhold available, but those too failed to hold my weight. As I descended, I idly wondered how long it would take to reach the bottom floor, and why all this garbage was piled up in this elevator. The doors opened, spilling some of the trash into the lobby. I walked out, the stone tile cracking under my feet as I did. I had always liked the lobby of this building. It was below the security checkpoint, so you could move about freely, and there were massive windows on either side. I didn’t spare much time to admire the flashing lightning and explosions outside though, as I was in a bit of a hurry… to… to do what? To talk to Joe? Didn’t I work here before I met Joe?

The moment of pause was all I needed to pull back from the strange sort of trance I had been in. My surroundings instantly lost their seeming verisimilitude. The windows showing destruction beyond faded to vague openings with flashes behind them. Those sharp-edged modern art sculptures around the lobby were reduced to fuzzy blobs that somehow still conveyed the intent to represent modern art - I wasn’t sure if that would still qualify them as modern art, or if they had somehow ascended to a new category of meta-modern art. Terrifying.

How had I gotten pulled in so quickly? It had been like a waking dream, following its own internal logic, with no regard for actual reality or causality, and I had just gone along with it, filling in details where they were lacking. I hadn’t even actually fallen asleep, I’d just spaced out while the dream sequence played out. Was I messing around with the normal part of the human psyche that controlled dreaming? Had the aliens built the login function on top of that to make this whole setup work? More things to worry about. I momentarily shrunk back from experimenting further, but then remembered my recent resolution: if I ran into limits, I’d remove them. That went for naturally occurring limits as well as those placed by the alien machinery still whirring away and changing things in the shrouded area (which I now very much doubted represented game functions we weren’t supposed to touch).

I sighed, in both my real body and my avatar. Somehow, despite my surroundings totally dissolving into various vague scenes, my avatar itself never wavered. It was dressed in the same hospital gown I was actually wearing, and seemed to keep its details if my attention strayed from it, distinctly unlike its surroundings. One moment an office with small animals swarming over every surface, the next, a zoo, but the cages are all open. I kept my avatar deliberately still, so as not to get swept up into any more dream narratives. Also so as not to break through the floor again. It seemed that by pushing harder on creation, I had ended up with an avatar that was somehow more ‘real’ than the dreams. Maybe a similar effect to the difference between the towers and Earth?

I’d need to be careful not to overdo it if I used this method instead of logging in properly. It wasn’t a huge problem in random dreamspace, but it was a massive, existential threat if the same thing happened in Finxi, situated as it was above some sort of eldritch god-monster. Which, oh shit, oh fuck, I now knew was probably entirely real. How far was that whole area from Earth?

My mind spun in helpless circles, anxiety ebbing and flowing as I tried and failed to figure out what was the highest priority to figure out, what looming disasters seemed most imminent, and where I might fit into all of it. So many new and terrible things to worry about. What did the aliens even hope to gain here? Was this really just a shared cultural experience? By the time I had calmed down enough that I was no longer in danger of hyperventilating, and I could no longer hear my heart hammering in my ears, it was much later and I was nearly falling asleep. The fatigue had probably done the lion’s share of the work calming down, honestly. Even with extra energy from my sun, I wasn’t nearly to the level of being some tireless monster - in this case to my benefit.

As I drifted off, I triggered the usual login function. I found myself before the central tower once more, this time whole and solid, and dressed in my magic pants. Could I bring my magic pants into arbitrary dream spaces? Could I bring stuff from arbitrary dream spaces here? I pondered what I might be able to do with that, and what it might mean, as I made my way toward the general area where I thought Joe’s house was. I wasn’t confident that I could find my way back entirely from memory, but I was confident that either Nico or his spider assistant had recorded the route.

I made it to Joe’s estate, mostly by relying on pulses of intuition from my makeshift minion GPS. The prospect of living a normal life was looking up, at least the part about being stripped of my augmentations. Still needed to tackle the whole paralysis issue. I shouted for Joe once I reached his front door, as knocking on the massive sliding slab of stone (or glass?) seemed like a poor decision. He should be aware of my presence through the friends list, but maybe he was busy? He did have a job now, allegedly.

At Nico’s urging, I headed toward the more populated streets. Normally, the idea of talking to random people unprompted would evoke nothing but discomfort, yet with the calming waves of social confidence flowing through me, it seemed almost easy. It took a few groups before I got solid directions to the practice grounds, and another when I got turned around, but I eventually found what I was looking for.

The aspirant practice grounds was in the ring of noble estates, though it was about a quarter of the way clockwise from where Joe lived. The property didn’t have a wall like the neighboring estates, but there were standing stones erected at regular intervals along the property line. Each monolith was carved in the image of the skyscrapers, which were visible on the horizon. There were a few small white brick buildings, as well as some stone pavilions, and a single open-air theater. I could see a crowd there, mostly seated, with Joe in the center, painting charts onto a stark white wall with an oversized brush. As I got closer, I could see that the majority of the crowd were the white skinned humanoids… whose actual name I should really learn, seeing as they are probably real people.

[They are ‘the Er people’, uncertain if there is a less unwieldy noun form, ‘Draconid’ for both Joe’s race and the two-headed snake men, and just ‘Elf’ for the elder you engaged in a magical duel.]

That mind-controlling bitch. Elf, really? Easy to remember I guess. I stood at the edge of the theater. The only other person standing was an Er woman, dressed in the loudest, reddest silk robe the universe had ever seen. So bold was the color that everything near her seemed duller for it. She gave me an appraising look, then turned back to watch Joe teach. From the dense echoes of complex essence washing off of her, I assumed she was an elder, though not one I had met, probably here to supervise the outsider coming in to teach sorcery. Make sure they were getting their money’s worth, so to speak. I recognized some of the figures Joe was drawing, and it only took a few seconds for me to place his lesson: an intermediate protocol intended for probing fully immersive, physics-based simulations when you had no access to the source code and minimal information about the server architecture. Probably a good pick. I suppose I wasn’t in any great hurry, so I leaned back against one of the columns ringing the theater. That dragon could wait. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the elder spoke.

“Do you reach for the truth as well, traveler?” What an oddly appropriate question. Maybe she could sense my inner turmoil somehow? Her accent was strange, much like the other elders I had met, but her cadence strong. She certainly projected confidence.

“I do.”

I’d need the truth, after all, to unravel the full scope of the situation I was in, to be able to make any sort of plan of action to keep myself safe, and to stay out of the hands of any other opportunists who might seek to use me as a stepping stone. Besides, the foundation of my understanding of the universe had just been invalidated. I was worried that if I didn’t fill that void, the anxiety would only grow.

“Go, sit. They will not reject you for being human.”

“Ah, my mistake,” I said, “I thought you were asking a philosophical question. I’m not here to learn sorcery.”

“No?” she seemed momentarily perplexed, “Ah, I see. You are Will. You wait on your companion.”

“He mentioned me?”

She nodded, “You will teach as well. He has said that you possess advanced knowledge of these techniques.”

“I will, yes, though I have suffered some health problems, which have prevented me from doing so the past few weeks,” I said, then considered my next words carefully. After a few moments, I spoke again, “I would not say that my knowledge is more advanced. I just followed a different path. I learned how to create these… partial worlds. It can give you a different perspective on taking them apart.”

“I see,” she said, with a small smile, “I will look forward to your lessons. A wonderful idea, bringing outside perspectives for the aspirants.”

We fell silent, both observing Joe’s lesson. He took to the role surprisingly well, explaining the process and purpose behind each step, and entertained a number of hypothetical questions posed by his audience. Maybe he had missed his calling working in QA?

Thankfully, students of sorcery required breaks as much as their mundane counterparts. As the flock of alien townsfolk stood and stretched or conversed with one another, Joe made his way over, waving and speaking as soon as he was within a reasonable distance.

“Hey Will!” he called, “I’m glad you made it. I was a little worried that things might go really wrong once you woke up. So what’s the deal in the real world? Are you captured?”

I looked at him, then at the elder standing right next to me, then back to him.

“Don’t worry Will,” Joe said, “She seems to be more scripted than the townsfolk, doesn’t respond to any meta stuff at all.”

I glanced back at the elder, who met my eyes with a bland smile, but made no comment. What?

“I… I’m not in the arcology, that’s for sure. I’m out in the wilds, somewhere called Maryland. They think they rescued me. I don’t think I’m in any immediate danger. No idea where you are, though. I don’t think they picked up anyone else, but I can see if anyone will answer my questions tomorrow.”

“Hm, I guess I am probably still in New York,” Joe said, idly scratching at the scales under one eye, “Those bastards are probably experimenting on me or something.”

Would they? Yeah, probably. Weren’t we all going to be transferred to R&D if we didn’t meet our key farming goal? Maybe the Marylandians had done me a bigger favor than I had originally realized.

“You seem weirdly unbothered by the prospect,” I said.

Joe just shrugged, “It’s nicer on this side. Only thing that bugs me is that I can’t let my daughter know that I’m alright.”

I returned the shrug. Nothing I could do about that either. “So why’s this elder scripted, when no one else seems to be?”

It just didn’t make sense. They weren’t NPCs or constructs at all.

“Oh, this is the ‘great sorceress’ we’ve been told about.”

My blood ran cold. I could feel my chest tightening. I looked back to the diminutive figure next to me. She wasn’t scripted - she was actively deceiving us.

[This is a priceless opportunity, ask a question.]

Nico was right. But I also didn’t want to give away that I knew just yet. She was pretending for a reason, so there was no harm in going along with it for now.

“So, uh, you built all this?” I asked, indicating the area around us.

“Look at you,” Joe said, “all interested in lore now. I’ve got to get back to my class, but we can chat afterwards. She already told me about the next part of the main quest, so make sure you pick it up!”

She smiled at me again as he walked off, this time showing just a little bit of her teeth.

“I built the towers. I…” she paused, then spoke again, this time in the language from that first recording. Each terrible syllable lanced into my psyche as she did, the game interface taking over and converting it into something I could understand.

[I deepened the Physicality of this region.]

Then she resumed in English, “Making it hospitable for the mortals who chose to follow. They built the town.”

“Are you not mortal?” I asked.

“Not yet truly immortal, though I age slowly. Awakened charms alone cannot directly defy the edicts of the Great Spirits, and the forms of true immortality available to a sorceress of the First Circle are either unacceptable, or require resources I have no hope to gain.”

“So you are going to… level up? Is that why you want to listen to Joe and my techniques?” Or… did she need ‘resources’? Was she feeding on our presence here somehow?

She laughed, and a fragment of the power when she spoke that other language crept into the sound, shaking me to my core.

“I will keep an open mind,” she said, “but it will only speed me along. A year or two at most, and I will consolidate the First Circle and embark upon the Second. I would be working on that now, if not for… matters of maintenance within the towers.”

She was pretty forthcoming. Playing out the part of a story NPC, probably. But how much of this was meaningless ‘game’ lore, and how much was actually relevant to my new reality? That was much trickier to sort out.

“How long does it normally take to become a sorcerer?” I asked.

“Decades for the gifted, more than a lifetime for those who are not.”

“I see…” I wasn’t sure what else I could ask, or how to separate fact from fiction. Though I could potentially illuminate more of her agenda by asking about this ‘main quest’.

“So, what is our purpose here? Why did you call us travelers to these towers?”

Again, that smile, just a little bit of teeth.

“I brought you here to give the towers to you. Here, you can grow strong, you can become ready to venture further.” Her voice had taken on the steady cadence of a rehearsed speech. “Your next step will be to climb the central tower, the top of which contains both the way to the controls for the towers, and the path to the untamed regions beyond them.”

Control of the towers was a good prize to tempt people further, but didn’t really reveal the shape of where this was going.

“What will we find if we venture further?”

“Other civilizations lie beyond that wilderness, some of which will not be friendly to you. That is why you must be strong.”

Ah, there it was. Unwitting, endlessly respawning slave soldiers, pointed in the direction of her enemies. Tell people it’s PVP and they’ll toss themselves into the grinder willingly.