Jack was just walking into the building at DreamScape HQ for work. He was running a little late after having slept in a bit but he was sure his boss wouldn’t mind too much. He had been up until the early morning hours last night trying to solve his little problem with Amy’s help. He had huge dark bags under his eyes and a cup of coffee from the local coffee shop near his house. Even with his caffeinated beverage, it still wasn’t enough to manage more than a grunt in greetings when his co-workers said hello. They others weren’t really offended though. They had all worked their share of late nights and all knew that he would be okay once he was able to wake up a bit more.

Jack stepped into the elevator and rode it to the third floor. He walked down the hallway and after passing through a security checkpoint and turning down a side corridor, he finally set foot in his own domain. As he passed the numerous server nodes and data towers he came to a stop at a plain looking door, pulled out a key ring with a single key on it, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. “Hey Amy, sorry I’m a bit late. My bed was holding me hostage and it took me a while to escape.”

“Hey Jack! I’m glad to hear you had a bit more rest than you intended. You were starting to look pretty haggard there.” Amy’s ‘image’ appeared on one of the monitors. She had a cheerful smile and was standing with her hands clutched behind her back. Like a little girl about to give her beloved daddy the biggest surprise ever. Which now that she thought about it, suited Amy’s situation quite well. “Heey Jaaaaack~ Guess what? You don’t need to work late anymore! I solved all your problems!” At this point, Amy’s avatar was practically bouncing in place while Jack had his back to her making yet another pot of coffee. “That’s nice Amy. Could you reopen that program I was working on last night before I went home? I think I might have been close to a breakthrough with it and I have a few more ideas I want to try.”

Jack’s words quelled Amy’s excitement. “Umm Jack? Didn’t you hear me? We have another self aware artificial intelligence. You don’t have to work on that software anymore. We can just use the codes from this new AI.” Jack Continued pouring water into the coffee maker and set a coffee pitcher under the spigot for the coffee to pour into. “Sure, that sounds nice. I’ll get right on that after lunch.” Amy’s smile disappeared completely. This was not how she imagined Jack receiving her excellent news and it was starting to irritate her. Her voice became completely monotone. “Oh nooo. I deleted the entire server and removed all source codes. The game no longer exists.” Oddly enough, while there was no pitch or change to her words, the sarcasm in Amy’s voice was oozing so thickly, that one could almost manage to taste it. Yet Jack remained unperturbed. “Okay. I’ll try once I get this coffee going”

Amy couldn’t help but groan to herself. Of COURSE she had to deal with Zombie Jack first thing in the morning. Normally people would wait about an hour or so once Jack got to work in the mornings before coming to him with their problems. All they would ever get from him in response was either a grunt, or a complete gibberish response. Sometimes the other co-workers would send their new recruits to him in the mornings as a sort of hazing ritual. Whenever an intern was sent to Jack with a ‘problem’ that needed ‘solving’ in the mornings, they never got a good answer. Most times it was hilariously good fun, but there were a rare few instances where Jack’s complete gibberish morning responses caused some problems. Once an intern was sent to Jack one morning to find out how to solve a problem causing a server to lag in regular intervals on a game they had been working on the guys already knew what the problem was and had in fact already fixed the issue but had sent the intern out any ways for some laughs. Jacks nonsensical response was to “Jiggle the hard unit processor until the fuzzies go away.” naturally no one knew what that meant, but the intern took that to mean that he had to unplug the power cord for the server tower that was being worked on. The entire project was delayed for 5 hours while everyone ran around trying to figure out where their server crashed to. Turns out when the intern tried plugging the cord back in, he didn’t quite stick it in all the way, resulting in the apparent loss of power.

Amy pondered her dilemma. Somehow she needed to get Jack to focus long enough to hear her out. She snapped her virtual fingers when an idea came to her half a second later. She opened a music file, selected the most annoying song she could find, and proceeded to play the song on the loud speakers with the volume boosted loud enough to be heard by other people working in the nearby offices. Needless to say, it grabbed Jack’s attention as well. “Gaah! Amy! Why the hell are you playing music so loud! Turn it down!” Amy didn’t turn it down. Instead she glared heatedly at Jack and said nothing. Jack rushed over to the computer and stopped the music himself once it was apparent that Amy wasn’t going to do anything about it. “What the hell was that for Amy? People are trying to work.”

Amy crossed her arms in a huff. “Well how else am I supposed to get your attention when you won’t even listen to what I’m trying to say!” Jack released a frustrated sigh before finally saying, “well alright, you have my attention. What did you want to say?”

Amy once more, started smiling. She couldn’t wait to tell him the big news!

Ebony had been walking for a while now. The sun was still shining high in the sky and the forest canopy was lit with dappled beams of sunlight. Giving the area a serene and peaceful quality. I could almost come to enjoy this, if it wasn’t for my current situation with not being able to log out and all that. Looking up into the dappled greenery to figure out the time is kinda pointless but if I had to guess, it should be an hour or three before noon. Random adventurers should be flooding the forest by now. The fact that I haven’t run into any goes to show that I might not be near the village I started in. I hope my spawn point isn’t on the opposite end of the forest from the village. That would mean I have to pass by what ever beast is hiding in the central woods every time I wanted to go to the village after I die. Instead of turning around and going back, I decide I might as well go to the forest edge. I might be able to see some landmarks and get my bearings to figure out where I need to go next.

After picking up the pace it isn’t long before I see bright sunlight shining on a vast meadow or grassy plain a hundred or so yards away through the trees. In my excitement I start running. Finally! An end to the ceaseless parade of trees! Something different! I’m so excited! I can’t wai-

*WHAM*

I see flashes of light everywhere and the world is spinning around me. Whuu… Whudafuug jis hit meh… As the dizziness settles and I am able to focus through the blinding pain radiating from my abused snout, my thoughts realign to determine the cause of my newfound source of pain. I look around me and see I am at the very edge of the treeline, just behind the farthest extending tree trunks from the forest. I didn’t even get out from under the tree canopy before something hit me in the face, stopping me in my tracks. As I look around however, there isn’t anyone in sight. Finding the lack of attackers rather odd, I nevertheless carefully step forward, looking all around me for potential threats. I shouldn’t have even bothered looking, as after one step I immediately found the source of my troubles… once again with my face. What? There’s nothing there! That’s right. I am smashing my face on empty air. After lifting my paw to feel it out, I determine it to be some sort of barrier. I try walking sideways to see if I can find my way around it and after several dozen feet I am starting to notice a pattern with the barrier. It seems to perfectly line up with the edge of the forest… Hell, now that I’m looking at it, the forest itself is kinda unusual in that there seems to be a line that separates the woodlands from the plains. There are trees growing all the way up to this invisible boundary line but beyond that not even a single shrubbery has taken root. No matter how far I am walking, I can never go further than the trunks of the trees growing at the edge of this ‘boundary’ before the barrier stops me. After about 20 minutes of walking along the forest edge with no end to the barrier in sight (Well maybe not in sight, but you know what I mean!) I come to the conclusion that the barrier most likely surrounds the entire forest. That wasn’t my only clue though. I noticed I had a notification after my long walk and learned an interesting piece of information.

Notice: As a forest dweller, you cannot leave the forest’s domain without permission from the forest guardian. Current Guardian: Falkreath the Noble.

Well shit. This seriously put a kink in my plan. How am I supposed to go into the village if I can’t leave the forest? I decide to think on this more later when I have time. For now I think I should at least get to the village before deciding to give up. Turning away from the Barrier, I make my way back into the woods only to stop in my tracks. Standing in front of me is a man in what appears to be plain purple wizard robes and a simple carved staff in hand. He had the beginnings of a beard and was staring at me intently. As inconspicuous as this man seemed to be, I instantly knew that this man would never blend in with a crowd. The symbol of a closed eye stitched front and center on his robes which showed him to be an admin for dreamscape online made sure of that.

I stood there dumbfounded for a long time. After all that time I spent struggling, striving to find someone to help me escape from my prison, here was the answer to all my prayers. It was all so sudden I didn’t know how to feel. I wanted to laugh with joy. I wanted to cry with relief. I wanted to scream and shout all my troubles and frustrations into the wind. I wanted to do all of that, and so much more… yet I just stood there. Doing nothing.

Suddenly the man cleared his throat, jarring me out of my thoughts. “Umm. Hello there… umm. Can you… understand me?” I tried to say yes. A thousand times yes, but to my frustrations, all I could do was give a low feline growl. “Uuh. was that a yes, or a no?” I decided to keep things simple and only nodded my head this time. The man in robes smiled wide at my response. “That’s great! You can understand me!... um… but one way communication isn’t actually the most ideal situation. Are you busy with something important right now? I think I have an idea on how we can have a real conversation, but I wouldn’t want to pull you away from something you might be in the middle of doing.” I shake my head vigorously in a negative response. Of course I have nothing to do! There is nothing more important to me right now than this very moment! “Perfect! There is a way we can communicate, but I kinda have to kill you to get you there. It is inside your Spawn zone. Normal games rules don’t generally apply to a creature’s spawn zone, so unlike here, you aren’t forced to simple beastial vocalizations for speech. Once I kill you and send you back there, I can meet you there myself.”

I agree with his plan right away. The sooner I can talk with Mr. Admin, the sooner I can get the hell out of this game! The guy seems to be typing something on a keyboard I can’t see and a few seconds later I am standing in my respawn chamber.

You have died!

Death blow: /slay command

Hmmm… at least it was painless. Probably the most pleasant death I have had so far. About a minute later there is a column of purple light and when it vanishes the admin is standing there, except this time, he isn’t alone. Standing next to him, there is a young woman with hair that falls just under her shoulder and she has a beautiful smile on her face as she stares at me. I hesitate when I see her but gather my courage before I hurriedly explain my situation. “Thank god you’re here! Look I really need your help! Something weird happened while I was playing the game last night and I woke up as this panther and now I can’t log out and I’m probably missing my college or something but I don’t care about that because my brother is probably worried sick and if I don’t get back soon he is gonna kill me!!!” As I spoke my words rushed together into a nonstop sentence. Eventually though I had to stop and take a breath and the Admin took the chance to cut in. “We know.” huh? Say what now? Seeing that I stopped ranting he continued. “We know, but that’s where the problem lies. I’ve got some pretty bad news for you. I mean really bad news. You are probably going to have problems accepting it, but it’s important that you listen to me.” I nod slowly. Not like things can get any worse anyways. “Last night, a player named Riley Grey logged into dreamscape online during a thunderstorm. Normally this never has any problems whatsoever due to today’s construction laws and safety measures installed in every Virtuo pod in the world. Unfortunately for Riley, someone didn’t like him too much. This person sabotaged Riley’s virtuo pod and directed an electrical current into Riley’s apartment and directly into the virtuo pod. The apartment lost power from the surge and the pod short circuited. Riley’s brother Evan went to check on Riley after the power went out. He called the police shortly after that. When the police arrived on the scene Riley was pronounced dead. The electrical surge through the pod fried his entire body and killed him instantly.”

I sat there in a daze. Dead? I’m… dead? “If… if I’m dead, than what am I right now?!” At my words the woman, whom had been standing quietly the entire time finally stepped forward. “That’s where my part of the story comes in. My name is Amy. I am the governing AI that runs Dreamscape online.” When I don’t say anything to question her, she continues. “When Riley first started playing DSO I was interested in his unique interactions with the NPC’s and wanted to reward him with a chance at an interesting quest. That quest being the one that involved you with the Shadow panther that is your current form. I created a custom mob NPC just for you to interact with. I put levels of effort that was incomparable to the amount of effort I put into crafting a regular NPC into this creature. It was capable of streaming its sensations to you allowing you to experience the panther’s actions from a first person perspective. Because of this, your personality, thoughts, emotions, and all the other mental baggages humans generally come with naturally leaked into the panther’s coding matrix. Normally the quest would have ended and each of your two identities would have separated with no problems or after effects. When Riley ceased to exist however, the emotions and memories had nowhere to go, so they merged with the panther’s matrix. This sudden introduction of rational thought and self introspection to the code created you. A self aware artificial intelligence created from my own codes and Riley Grey’s memories!”

There was to much. Way to much information! Things were happening to fast and he had no time to think and put everything together. I looked at Amy. “Wh.. What are you trying to s-say?”

Amy’s smile grew even wider and she opened her arms wide. “Come and give Mommy a big hug!!!”

My vision faded to darkness and I became numb to the world.