In November of 1963, as he lay dying in bed of laryngeal cancer, the famous author Aldous Huxley indicated to his wife Laura that he wished to be administered an intramuscular injection of 100 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide, which you probably better know as the hallucinogen LSD (or sometimes just "acid"). LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman as part of his research into medically useful applications of derivatives from ergot fungus, which grows on rye and causes ergotism—also known as ergot poisoning—when ingested via contaminated rye bread. The poisoning often produces visual and auditory hallucinations, among other unpleasant side effects, in unsuspecting victims who are commonly not aware that they are under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance, and has been suggested as a possible cause of numerous bizarre historical events, including the dancing plague of 1518 and the Salem witch trial accusations in 1692.

I know all of this because when I was 15 years old, I followed up an AP-English mandated reading of Huxley's Brave New World with a voluntary reading of his lesser-known book The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, which goes into great detail describing his experiences and thoughts while taking mescaline, a psychedelic chemical similar to LSD which occurs naturally in the peyote cactus and which has been used in Native American religious ceremonies for nearly 6,000 years. The book was extremely influential in the psychonaut circles of the 1960s and was arguably still one of the most accessible, trustworthy information sources about the subjective effects of hallucinogenic drugs available to a teenager in the early 2000s—other than buddying up to your resident high school druggie and popping an acid tab for some primary research, of course.

As a nerdy kid who became a nerdy adult with a boatload of responsibility on his shoulders, I never have taken and never intend to take any kind of hallucinogen. No matter how many times drug enthusiasts might point out that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates microdosed LSD or whatever, I've always believed that I'm going to be the best version of myself that I can be when I have a perfectly clear head. Other than my few small indiscretions with pot in high school, I've just never been interested—hell, I barely drink. But I was fascinated by the idea that there were chemical substances in the world which could so radically alter one's perception as to make them see, hear, and even feel things that weren't really happening, and I ended up doing a bunch of follow-up research on Huxley, LSD, ergot, and hallucinations.

My takeaway from all of this reading and research was twofold: First, despite being kind of brilliant, Aldous Huxley was also pretty fucking crazy. Who the hell decides that the best time to trip balls is hours before your own imminent death? It sounds terrifying. And the craziest part of all is that he doubled down on it, asking for another dose just one hour later! Morphine, other painkillers, maybe a sedative—any of that I could understand. But LSD? Wow, Aldous. Just, wow. I guess it worked out okay for him in the end, but jeez... what if it hadn't?

My second takeaway was that if I should ever find myself in a situation where I had absolutely no explanation for the events occurring around me, and I didn't believe myself to be dreaming, the most rational assumption to make was that I had been dosed with one of these drugs without my knowledge or consent—although probably not ergot poisoning, since that shit is highly unlikely in modern day America. I've spent my whole life avoiding rye bread, just in case.

As I slammed my hand down on the start button of the Ataraxis arcade console and watched reality melt away around me, Someone drugged me, was exactly the thought that ran through my head.

Actually, that was my second thought. My first thought was, Holy shit what the fuck is happening shit shit shit did the arcade seriously just melt into black nothingness around me?

Then I thought, Someone drugged me, followed by, This is going to seriously interfere with my search for Brianna, and I wonder how you prematurely end an acid trip.

I was standing in utter blackness on some kind of hard, featureless surface which was visually indistinct from the air around me. My natural curiosity quickly overwhelmed the initial shock of confusion. Looking down, I could see my body—arms, chest, legs, and clothes—perfectly clearly, although there was no obvious light source in the matte, inky blackness surrounding me. I stretched my arms out as far as I could in front of me and then to either side and encountered no resistance, even though I was certain I hadn't moved and my hands should have made contact with the screen of the arcade machine. At least I still appeared to have a solid, resistant floor beneath my feet. I bounced once or twice to verify that there was gravity and then dropped to my knees to put my hands down on the ground. Rather than the yielding, threadbare carpet of the arcade, my fingertips encountered something like cool, perfectly smooth stone that had the texture of polished marble but none of the sheen. It was just black, like everything else.

This was already the weirdest experience of my life, and nothing like any drug trip I'd ever read about before. As an experiment, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of my hand against the blackness. It worked fine, although there was no glare from the flash on anything but my hand, and I was able to flip back and forth between the other pictures saved on my phone and the mysterious picture of my current surroundings without an issue. I did notice that my phone had lost all cellular and wifi signals, though. If this was some kind of drug experience, it was incredibly precise and finicky with it's electronic details.

Unsure of what to do next, I turned around, looking for some sign of... well, anything other than me. Then I immediately felt foolish.

Next time, check behind you before you start poking the floor, dummy, I chided myself.

Twelve-foot tall, all-capitalized, bright purple block lettering spelling out the word "ATARAXIA" hung unsupported in midair about ten paces away from me, like a giant billboard advertisement for the arcade console I had just pressed start on. Within arms' reach in front of me, between the lettering and my body, hovered a small, teal, two-dimensional, translucent rectangle with the words "Create New Character" floating in the middle of it in a slightly brighter shade of blue. It was at this point that I genuinely began to doubt my sanity.

I know what you're thinking. I've seen plenty of fantasy and sci-fi movies from the 80s and 90s, and I too grew up reading books where the contemporary child protagonists are whisked away to magical fantasy realms where they get to meet magic talking lions and shit. Despite the fact that I was not a child protagonist by any stretch of the imagination, I couldn't just rule out the mounting evidence that I had been sucked into some kind of magical fantasy game. The only problem with that was that I didn't believe in magic.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not such an idiot that I would stand here denying the existence of something that was right in front of me. What I mean is that I'm very much a proponent of the Arthur C Clark school of thought which holds that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The first time I ever held an iPod in my hands and marveled at the fact that this tiny brick of plastic and metal could hold thousands of songs all at the same time felt like magic to me. When Mark sent me a Kindle for Christmas one year and I was blown away by the ability to carry an entire library's worth of books in my backpack, that felt like magic. When I bought a new stereo for my car with bluetooth capability and experienced it automatically pairing with my phone as I climbed into my vehicle, that felt like magic too.

There's no such thing as "magic" in the real world. It's just technology you don't understand yet. That was how this experience felt. I certainly didn't understand what was going on or how I could be physically moved from the arcade to another location at the press of a button, but since it seemed to have happened, I had to grudgingly acknowledge that there might be technology that was capable of doing that in play.

But what kind of technology? Lots of books and films had teased futuristic virtual reality simulations with the level of immersion I was witnessing, but that didn't seem remotely plausible here. I'd watched the news and buzz around the in-development VR technology for the last few years with bated breath—I still dreamed of the day when I could hang with friends in VR, after all, even if I wasn't going to get to contribute to it. But as far as I knew, the headset rigs that were set to come out in the next year or two paled in comparison to what I was experiencing right now. It would probably be decades before modern technology even perfected physical haptic feedback, and a full-body suit would still be required. This seemed like... something else.

In fact, if I really distilled things down to their essence, there were only two real possibilities here: either I was hallucinating, whether due to drugs, psychosis, or some kind of unexplained mystical experience, or this was real, in the sense that a completely unfamiliar technology centuries ahead of any VR-tech I knew about had transported either my mind or my body to wherever here was.

If I was hallucinating, I'd so completely lost touch with the physical world that I may as well just go along with it. If this was actually happening to me, it had probably happened to Brianna too, which meant I'd need to continue in order to find her. Either way, it was obvious what I should do.

Plus, let's be real: I'm a lifelong gamer at heart, and no matter how worried I was about my sister, I was dying to see this character creation menu. Did I really need any more justification?

I reached out to swipe at the floating, translucent "Create New Character" rectangle, and was surprised to discover that the two-dimensional object was a physical entity which depressed slightly at my touch with a small amount of resistance, just like a mechanical button would. This, of course, made no fucking sense, but whatever.

The billboard-sized ATARAXIA text faded away along with the button I'd just pressed to be replaced with a series of graphical elements which looked, if not familiar, then at least conceptually similar to the types of menus I'd been staring at since I was old enough for dad to shove a controller into my hands. A slightly shimmering rectangular barrier about seven feet tall and three feet wide now separated me from your average fantasy hero dude, by which I mean that he was a perfect human specimen. He had brown eyes, short brown hair, and was dressed only in a pair of tight, grey boxer shorts. He stood an inch or two taller than me, his body muscular without being bulky, and obviously anatomically correct. If this was a computer model, it was so lifelike that I sure couldn't tell the difference, and I noticed very quickly that he mimicked my movements and facial expressions precisely, as though I were looking into a mirror.

To the left and right of my unsettling mimic were a dizzying array of sliders and selections that also looked like a very detailed version of the controls in hundreds of games I'd played before. Above him floated white, serif text that read "Customize your Avatar." The very first buttons that I'd noticed were a pair of prominent symbols at the top of the left side controls: the shield and spear of Mars, and the handled bronze mirror of Venus.

Purely out of curiosity, I pressed the Venus symbol for a moment, and watched as the stereotypical fantasy man in front of me melted into the stereotypical fantasy woman with a stereotypically well-endowed chest. She was also incredibly lifelike, anatomically correct, and dressed in only her tight grey underwear. I averted my eyes and blushed furiously while rapidly switching back to the male figure. If I wanted to look at porn, there'd be plenty of time for that after Brianna was safely back at home and I was done having this bizarre game hallucination.

Despite how surreal this all was, I hadn't forgotten about Brianna, so I rolled with my situation and started making some quick adjustments. The faster I had a character, the faster I could start trying to figure out what was going on and get my sister to safety. I made my avatar the same height as me, 5'11", and left him with his muscular-but-not-bulky build. I also gave him the same shaggy, sandy-blond hair and blueish-gray eyes I'd inherited from my dad. I adjusted his physical age up to 28, added a light dusting of stubble, and then decided I was done. I stepped back to admire my work.

Now the man mimicking my every motion in the panel in front of me was a little less unsettling. He didn't look exactly like me, but he could have easily been the alternate reality fantasy version of me, or an older brother who had grown up on a savage jungle planet. The last thing to do was enter a name for him, using a floating translucent QWERTY style keyboard. Because I'm incredibly original when it comes to dreaming up heroic fantasy names, I typed in "Michael Peters." I've never liked stupid fantasy pseudonyms with oddly-placed apostrophes or cribbing character names from popular fantasy novels anyway, and using my real name just seemed like the most straightforward thing to do.

As soon as I pressed the button marked "Next", my avatar froze in place and the menus faded, and he suddenly began to rotate in place like he was turning on a pedestal. Then two floating buttons appeared where the creation controls had been: "Confirm" and "Back." I didn't need to check my avatar's ass out to know I was happy with the character I'd just made. I wanted to get going, so I impatiently jammed "Confirm."

Then I had the incredibly disorienting experience of rushing toward my avatar at high speed, even though I wasn't moving. In the space of a second, he was gone. Then I looked down at my body and amended that thought: he wasn't gone. I was gone. Or rather, I now appeared to be piloting the body I'd just created, and it felt completely real.

"Whoa," I murmured, raising my hands in front of my face to inspect my newly muscled and callused limbs.

But there wasn't much time for reflection. Even as I stared at my new hands in shock, an extremely lifelike scene was melting into view all around me just like the arcade had melted away a short while before. I was standing on a narrow, stone platform that stretched in front of me and behind me as far as the eye could see with a twelve-foot span of dark, apparently bottomless pit on either side of me. Beyond the pit on both sides was a pock-marked stone wall colored in yellowish hues by the flickering torches that lined it at regular intervals. The walls curved into an arch about twenty feet above me.

I was standing mostly-naked in some kind of dungeon tunnel, and my only choices were to walk forward or backward. Before I could even think about that, a small, translucent teal-colored rectangle like all of the message boxes I'd seen flickered into position over my left eye, less than a centimeter away from it. I flinched back in surprise, but the box moved with me. It was roughly one inch tall and two inches wide, and when I raised a hand to touch it I found that this box was not solid. It was more like a floating hologram with a fixed position relative to my face.

Bright blue text began to stream across the surface of it, positioned at the perfect location and resolution for my eye to comfortably read without obscuring my vision of the area in front of me, as though this box were some kind of heads-up display.

"Welcome to the Tutorial, Michael Peters!" the text read. "Instruction: Run or die."

I blinked.

"What the hell?" I murmured.

And then the floor began to crumble and fall out from behind me.