“Wait a minute! What do you mean you were a beta tester?” Rebecca asked, sounding shocked.

“It’s complicated,” Matthew said, as he took a deep breath and shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’ll try and explain it, but you probably won’t believe me. No one believed me, and now it’s too late.” Sluggishly, he leaned back against the wall and rubbed his hand through his hair a few times. “I don’t guess you’d want to slide back over here and let me wrap an arm back around you, would you?” After waiting a moment with Rebecca remaining where she was, Matthew closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped visibly. “I didn’t think so,” he muttered, half under his breath.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back and stared up at the ceiling before continuing. “It was last year sometime – I don’t remember exactly when; but I guess it was just a few months after school started – that I was surfing the web and playing one of those war games on my phone. Yada… yada… some boring life as every other kid our age, I imagine,” he said, sighing deeply. “There was a pop-up advertising some other ‘new and innovative, one of a kind, breakthrough game, like no other’. I thought it sounded interesting, so I clicked on it and it took me to this stupid looking game page that looked like it was written when the internet first came out.” Matthew barked a short half laugh that made Rebecca cringe where she sat, and then he sat there and silently stared at the ceiling for a while.

After a long, uncomfortable pause, he finally started back up in a soft, whispering voice that she had to strain to hear, even though they were all alone in the closed off room. “It was super cheesy. Old school. Big block buttons. Goofy pixelated graphics. 1980’s theme music. Cheap, cheesy, with some sort of weak retro-crap vibe. I should’ve left then and I would’ve at least gotten to experience the last year as a normal person, but I didn’t. I scrolled past that eight thousand page long user-agreement page and clicked the stupid ‘I accept’ button without reading anything. We’d trained ourselves to do that, the idiots that we are.”

A few tears slowly tricked from the corner of his eyes, and Matthew absently rubbed them before rubbing his hands through his hair again. “There wasn’t anything more to the website except a single stupid page to choose a deity. I don’t have a clue how many stupid names were in the list that I scrolled through,” Matthew shrugged slightly, “but I saw one that I thought didn’t seem too lame – Hel – and I clicked on it. After that a pop-up appeared on my phone thanking for me playing and the screen went black. I thought it was one of those idiot troll sites and didn’t think any more about it and I went to bed.

“The next morning, everything fucked up,” Matthew muttered, as he slowly wiped tears from the corner of his eyes once again. “When I woke up, I could see a stupid set of colored bars over at the left side of my vision – a red one, a green one, and a blue one. I couldn’t touch them, they moved and stayed in the corner of my vision wherever I looked, and I couldn’t get rid of them. Rubbing my eyes didn’t make them go away, and when I tried to tell my mother about them so I could see a doctor, I couldn’t even talk about them. The words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I literally couldn’t tell anyone about those stupid colored bars.”

“I.. I don’t see anything like that,” Rebecca offered softly, wondering just exactly how much of his story was real and how much was all part of the delusions in his head.

“You wouldn’t,” Matthew laughed. “You’re just an NPC.”

“I’m not an NPC,” Rebecca laughed lightly. “I’m certainly in control of myself and just as real as you are.”

“No, no, no,” Matthew corrected, as he slowly straightened back up to stare at her again. “I’m not saying you’re some computer controlled character or whatnot. An NPC is a Non-Participating Character. You’re not in the game itself yet. You’re just one of those innocent bystanders that have to try and muddle along and not get eaten or killed while the other players do their things.”

“So how would I become a player,” Rebecca asked, slightly curious in spite of herself. If Matthew was delusional, it certainly sounded as if he believed in his delusions wholeheartedly. If he wasn’t, then it definitely sounded like this was a case where it’d be better to be a player than a spectator.

“You’d have to find a way to acquire your first class,” Matthew replied lightly. “I can help with that if you’d like,” he offered, as he slowly turned to stare creepily at her once again.

“And… And how would you help with that?” Back under his direct gaze once again, Rebecca couldn’t help but stutter. He just creeped her out so badly, the way he sat and stared so hungrily at her.

“For starters, you’d have to make an agreement with me,” Matthew warned, as he waggled one finger back and forth at her slowly. “I’ve been stuck in this damn game now, ever since that morning. I’ve had a chance to acquire some different things and some of the things I’ve held on to and hoarded were class books. I was thinking Kristy would be the person I’d get to save and make a bargain with, so one of the books I’m holding is for a Spelldancer class. She’s a cheerleader, athletic, energetic, and all. I thought it might be one suitable for her.”

“Well, I’m not all that energetic,” Rebecca reminded him. “I’m not a cheerleader or a dancer either one.”

“I’ve also got another two books. One is for a Glassier, which apparently has something to do with making crap out of glass. I really didn’t think it’d be that useful for the new game world which we live in now, but it seems like it probably could’ve made someone a fortune before all this mess started. The other book I have, I’m certain you wouldn’t be interested in.”

“Try me,” Rebecca shrugged. “You never know unless you tell me first.”

“Whore,” Matthew stated suddenly, while starting at her.

“I am not!” Blushing, Rebecca gripped her arms tighter around her chest and glared at him. “You were the one who undid my shirt like this!”

“I’m not calling you a whore,” Matthew chuckled lightly. “That’s the last class book that I have. It’s so someone can take the Whore class.”

“There’s no such thing as a ‘whore class’,” Rebecca countered, firmly.

“There is,” Matthew replied, plainly. “If you’d like to see the book…”

“No thank you.” Snorting slightly, Rebecca glared at him. “So basically you have books so someone could become either a Spelldancer or a Glassier…”

“Or a Whore,” Matthew interrupted.

“I think you’re right.” Rebecca continued on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “A Glassier doesn’t sound like it’d be all that useful if there’s going to be fighting going on, like with whatever that thing was in the stall. Give me the Spelldancer book,” she demanded.

“No.” Unblinking, Matthew flatly refused.

“No? Why not?” Just when she was starting to go along with his delusions, he refused her. Rebecca couldn’t figure out what was up with him at all!

“You haven’t made an agreement with me yet,” Matthew said, as he slowly tutted his finger from side to side in her direction. “These type things can only be used once, and I’m not going to just give them to anybody who will wander off and leave once they get the chance. We’re going to have to come to some sort of understanding between us first.”

“What type of understanding,” Rebecca asked, wearily.

“First, you’d have to agree to join with me and stay with me. I want a partner for this new damn game. I’m sick of being solo,” Matthew demanded, as he held up a single finger. “Second, you’d have to be willing to share the nights with me, just as much as the day, if you get my meaning,” Matthew smirked, as he held up his second finger.

“Basically, you want me to agree to let you screw me,” Rebecca said, glaring at him.

“Basically,” Matthew shrugged, agreeing with her. “You don’t know what I had to go through to get these books,” he explained, “and you don’t know how rare they are. I don’t think saving them until I find a woman who’s willing to share my bed and be a true companion for me is a bad thing. I’ve found three in the whole past year, and only one of them seems like it’d actually be that useful. Who knows how long it’d take for me to find something as good again to replace it,” he asked.

“Fine.” Glaring daggers at him, Rebecca defiantly refused to look away. “Let’s say I do agree to such a thing, what else do you expect. And just what the hell can I expect from you? You’re asking for a damn lot, for something which a person can’t even know if it’s real or not, until after you give it to them.”

“That’s the main thing I’d expect from you. You’d stay with me, never leave my party, and never refuse me. You wouldn’t run off and find some other jackass guy and toss yourself to him, and abandon me or anything like that. In return, I wouldn’t just give you the book, I’d offer to Mentor you in the game. If you knew anything at all about the game, you’d know how massive such an offer is from me.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Rebecca snorted. “Not unless you explain it to me.”

“Fine. I’ll try.” Sounding incredibly tired again, Matthew slowly leaned back against the wall and started to start back up at the ceiling once more. “In this game – or whatever the hell you want to call it – you have all the classic things that come with most other RPGs out there. Health points, mana points, levels, classes, and all that jazz. As a beta tester, I was allowed to level up to level twenty and that’s where the game capped at. In the game, you’re only allowed to group with someone as low as two-thirds your level, or as high as half again your level. I could basically group with people from level fifteen to level thirty.

“When you get your class, you’d start at level one,” Matthew pointed out.

“Then you wouldn’t be able to group with me anyway!”

“Not as a normal group member, but I can mentor you,” Matthew explained. “Once a character hits level twenty, they’re allowed to mentor up to one other player. While mentoring that player, any creature I kill or any quest I complete would share a portion of that experience with them. As they level up, I’d get a bonus point to put into my stats for each level they obtain, so I’d be getting a return for that shared experience as well.”

“So it’s a give and take relationship,” Rebecca mused. She’d heard of similar systems in various online games that she’d played before.

“It is,” Matthew agreed. “The deal is, a person is only allowed to mentor a single other player, until that player gets to level twenty themselves. If you were to die before then, I’d never be able to mentor another person ever again. It’s in my own best interests to give you the best gear I can, the best weapons I can, and to keep you safe and healthy until you’ve matured as a player on your own.

“It’s actually quite a drain on the higher level player,” Matthew explained. “You lose some of your own experience, have to give over items and gear, and have to be responsible to make certain another person stays safe – no matter what stupid noob thing they end up trying to do.”

“So basically,” Rebecca summarized, “the deal you’re looking to make is for me to join your group, let you enjoy my body, and for me to stay with you and never leave. In return, you’d give me a book to allow me to become a spelldancer, give me armor and gear, and share experience with me and keep me safe until I can level up and grow strong enough to survive on my own. Does that about cover it?”

“It does,” Matthew agreed.

“Then let me see that book,” Rebecca demanded. “You didn’t carry anything out of the classroom with you. If you can’t at least produce a book, then there’s nothing more for to talk about here, now is there?”

Matthew was silent for a moment, and the two stared wordlessly back and forth at each other. Finally, he eased up and walked across the room and around the corner to where the door leading outside was. Coming back a moment later, he held a large, solid white book in his hand. “Here it is. Do we have a deal?”

Rebecca stared for several long moments at the book, wondering just where it could’ve possibly came from, and then glanced back at the green-tainted water that was still oozing out from the bathroom stalls. Biting her lip, she shook her head back and forth a few times as if to clear it. “If that book makes me see those colored bars, and gives me a class, you’ve got a deal,” she finally whispered. “If what you’re saying is right, the whole world’s gone to hell, and nothing we were ever taught really matters anymore.”

“But,” she emphasized loudly, “if I don’t get a damn class from that book, and if nothing happens, then you’re fucking off your rocker and you’re going to unlock that door, let me out of her, and then you’re going to jail, directly to jail, and only to jail!”

“Fine,” Matthew agreed, holding the book out to her. Taking it hesitantly, Rebecca asked, “So what the hell do I do with this thing? Sit and read the whole thing? That’ll take a while,” she complained.

“Well, first,” Matthew laughed lightly, “you have to take off all your clothes.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Rebecca clutched the book tight to her chest and glared hard over at Matthew.

“Look, this isn’t my idea,” Matthew laughed, a smirk slowly creeping across his face. “It’s just one of the rules for gaining or changing a class. Each class has different gear that they’re allowed to use and wear, and if you’re going to swap to a new class, you have to do it naked and then equip yourself properly afterwards.”

“Well that’s just stupid,” Rebecca complained, slowly chewing on her bottom lip in annoyance.

“Maybe,” Matthew agreed, “but that’s just the way it is. Every game has rules, and that’s apparently one of the rules of the new reality that’s now the game of our lives.”

“Fine,” Rebecca glared at him, still clutching the book tightly to her. “Let’s say I get naked. Then what? I have to read this whole damn book?”

“Nope. These books don’t work like that,” Matthew explained. “In fact, you can’t even open the pages on it. They’ll seem to be glued all together, if you try. All you have to do is sit and stare at the book for about five minutes without blinking, and then it’ll disappear and you’ll have your class.”

“Just stare at it,” Rebecca asked, incredulously. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Matthew confirmed.

After pausing and chewing on her lip for a moment, Rebecca finally nodded to herself. “Fine then.” Slowly, she brushed past Matthew and walked around the corner to the small entrance where the door was. “If you come around here while I’m staring at this stupid book, our deals off and I’ll beat you to death with this stupid thing,” she called out to him. “I’m warning you now. If you’re honest about what you’re saying, and you want some sort of true companion, you’ll keep your ass on that side of the wall until I’m finished!”

“Fine,” Matthew called back, answering her. “I’ll see you in a few minutes then. Welcome to The Game.”