For a long while, there was nothing but the void. It wasn’t just complete sensory deprivation. It was nothing. No thoughts. No emotions. No sensations. Nothing. Just existence. Rune floating through the void, oblivious to the changing world. After what might as well have been eons, a series of words wormed their way into Rune’s mind.

>> Welcome to the Galaxy Rune! Please finalize your avatar.

>> Would you like to continue with your listed VC name? (Y/N)

What…

Rune’s thoughts drifted slowly through his head. It had been so long since he’d last thought, that he needed to remember how to think.

Who am I? Where am I? Why am I?

Rune drifted through oblivion and pondered the quintessential question of existence. It took him awhile to come to satisfactory conclusions. He was Rune Yahui. He was a Virtual Citizen. And he was going to make meaning out of his life.

Resolutions made, Rune shifted focus to the words floating through his mind. His name. Well, obviously his name was Rune Yahui. He didn’t want to change that.

>> Your name has been confirmed as Rune Yahui.

>> Would you like to randomly or manually distribute your stat points?

Rune had to think about more now. Stat points? What were stat points? Rune thought hard. If something was pointy, that meant it was sharp. So then were stat points something sharp? Something pointy? A weapon of some sort? No. That seemed wrong somehow…

Stat then. What was a stat? Oh right. Statuses. Like an Instabook status. So then the points that someone made in their Instabook status? Characteristics of a person? That seemed really close to the meaning, but not quite right. Then it clicked. Video games! They were video game stat points!

The memories started to trickle back. It was all starting to make sense. He had signed up to become a virtual citizen and was going to live out the rest of his life in a video game. And his stat points would define his character’s various attributes. Finally understanding the prompt, Rune realized that he would vastly prefer to manually distribute his stat points. If he was going to be living in his character’s body, it should be exactly as he would prefer, correct?

Yes, I would like to manually distribute my stat points.

Rune thought the words as loudly as he possibly could. This time, it was more of a sequence of words that drifted into his head.

>> Name: Rune Yahui

Level: 0

Titles:

Fame: 0

Strength: 0

Agility: 0

Acuity: 0

Comprehension: 0

Constitution: 0

Vitality: 0

Reflex: 0

Charisma: 0

Distributable Stat Points: 15 <<

Rune’s brain churned as it tried to remember all the meanings of the words flooding his mind. Strength was… Rune felt like the term was very familiar. A thought drifted through his mind.

>> Strength: Increasing your Strength builds your body’s muscles.

More memories started to trickle back. Namely, those of his body. Rune’s body. Rune had been human, and he had a body. Frowning, Rune struggled to remember what he’d looked like. His body spoke of a certain natural athleticism, but he’d never had the chance to build it to a meaningful level. He was much taller than wide, a gangly, skinny figure no matter how much he ate. He had decently long, solidly black hair that ran a good inch or so past the base of his skull. He’d inherited that from his Asian father.

And with that single thought about his family, everything came rushing back. His half American half Asian heritage. The mega-slums and Rune’s desire to escape them and find something better for himself. The opportunity to become a VC his only chance at that dream. Everything with making a lot more sense now. He was in the character creation screen. Rune brought up his status page again.

>> Name: Rune Yahui

Level: 0

v Attributes v

Fame: 0

Mental Linkages: 4

Class:

v Titles v

v Stats v

Strength: 0

Agility: 0

Acuity: 0

Comprehension: 0

Constitution: 0

Vitality: 0

Reflex: 0

Charisma: 0

Distributable Stat Points: 15 <<

Upon reading it again, Rune frowned. There was an obvious problem. All his stats were at zero. Typically a starting character had ten or so base stat points in every category so that the character could have a baseline strength in either field. Why did he have zero? Almost as if something was answering him, an alien thought filtered into his mind.

>> Stat points increase your natural inclination towards the stat by 0.5% of its original value plus 0.5% of the average of humanity.

That made a lot more sense. Assuming that his base stats were about the average of humanity, that meant he had roughly 15% of increase in stats that he could distribute. Having gained a rough understanding of the situation, Rune read over his stats. He’d pretty much already decided what he was going to upgrade by the time he’d finished reading them.

Rune wanted to make it big. Really big. Just as important, Rune wanted to be free. If he’d had his way in life, he’d have studied hard in school and worked his way up the social ladder with a good education. The military and the VC program had both been secondary, backup plans to the first—which had utterly fallen through. Now was his second chance. Rune knew that if he was going to use his brain to go places, then his brain was going to have to be pretty smart. Accordingly, Rune dumped seven points into Acuity and seven points into Comprehension before rolling the last one as random. It landed in reflex.

Stat distribution done, more alien thoughts drifted into his head. This time, they came with a hazy image. It was almost like Rune was seeing the image, but somehow he knew for sure that he wasn’t looking at it. The image itself was very familiar to Rune. In fact, it was him. Or at least, the version of him that he best remembered.

>> Would you like to modify your character’s appearance?

Rune shrugged. He wasn’t itching to make changes to his body. He liked how he looked. He didn’t have the most handsome face. His body wasn’t perfectly proportioned. But he was himself. That was… important. Changing that one last memento of who he was… No thanks. With that last decision made, the alien words filtered out of Rune’s head.

The next thing Rune knew, he was falling. The lights were stunningly bright, glaring into his eyes. Then he slammed into a sheet of steel, successfully bruising both of his elbows and knocking the wind out of himself. He groaned, rolled over, and futilely tried to cover his eyes.

“W-what the fuck?” The words were half mumbled, nearly incoherent. Surprisingly enough, a voice answered his words.

“Subject 911. Rune Yahui. Former resident of New Southern Chicago.” The words were dry, matter of fact. “Decent physicality. Average grades in school. No technical training of any sort.” The speaker clicked their tongue and paused. Rune tried to wipe the slime out of his eyes so that he could view the speaker and figure out what was going on. He only managed to make the problem worse, realizing far too late that his hands were also covered in slime and only smearing it more completely across his face. The speaker’s harsh voice boomed out again.

“Take him to Initialization Ward 551.” With those last words the man’s voice cut off, and Rune heard the stomp of feet on metal moving away from him.

“W-wait!” Rune rasped the desperate words, barely making them audible, before trying a second time. “Wait!” His only answer was the familiar whirring and clicking of an automated steel door sliding shut.

Finding his way unsteadily to his knees, Rune once again tried to wipe away mucus covering his face and eyes and failed.

“Is there anybody there? Hello? I need help.” Rune’s voice broke on the last word. He was just about to call out again when a rubber clasp of some sort clamped around both of his arms and abruptly dragged him to his feet.

“What the fuck!” Rune shouted the words, thrashing against the unseen restraints. A harsh, loud mechanical voice boomed out in response to his antics.

“CITIZEN 8117459. PLEASE CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY. YOU ARE CURRENTLY WITHIN A FACILITY UNDER UIS PURVIEW. ANY ATTEMPTS TO DAMAGE OR OBSTRUCT FACILITY PROCESSES OR EQUIPMENT WILL BE MET WITH EXCESSIVE FORCE.”

Rune gulped and stopped struggling. The machine continued to drag him, and as it did, Rune took a second to quickly gather his thoughts. This was supposed to be a video game. He’d been cut out of his body, he was just a brain now. Nothing this game could do to him could truly hurt him. He’d be fine. He just needed to breathe. Calm down. Keep thinking. In, out, in, out, in, ou—

Rune’s exercises halted as he felt the steel floor underneath his feet fall out from under his feet. Luckily, the clamps around his arms kept him aloft. Only for a couple seconds though.

With a whir of mechanisms, the pressure of the two clamps holding him aloft suddenly released and Rune found himself in midair. Falling. With an unmanly shriek and desperate flailing of his limbs, Rune fell through the air for a half second before splashing into a liquid.

After a second of confusion, Rune managed to orient himself and open his eyes, finding for the first time that he was able to open his eyes and see more than opaque, blurred suggestions of objects through a layer of slime. He could see perfectly. Whatever the liquid he’d been dropped into, it had burned through the slime that had been covering his skin. He could feel the substance slowly being removed, bit by bit, every little last drop of the clinging substance disappearing. Rune reveled in the faint itching sensation, flailing this way and that in the warm, clear liquid, taking stock of his new body and then his surroundings.

Steel walls surrounded Rune on every side, seemingly forming a tank reminiscent of a larger version of the gel vat he’d climbed into when originally becoming a VC. Rune shrugged and then pushed off the bottom of the tank, swimming towards the top. With a thunk, Rune’s face bounced off the opaque covering to the vat Rune was in.

Flailing about for a second, Rune struggled to overcome the pain and reorient himself when he realized that he was trapped in the tank. Rune didn’t panic though. This wasn’t the first tank that he’d been stuck in through this process. Opening his mouth and breathing the liquid in, Rune felt the familiar burning sensation of the liquid filling his stomach and lungs. While it felt rather strange Rune didn’t feel any need to breathe, the liquid somehow doing the work for him.

`The most pressing issue solved, Rune glanced around the tank, thoroughly taking in his surroundings for the first. There were strange lines that may or may not have been decorative on the steel surrounding him, but aside from that, the vat was more or less plain. Bored, Rune did flips in the liquid to pass the time.

Minutes passed and Rune passed them time by varying his acrobatics more and more. Then, the bubbles came. From the bottom of the vat, a veritable storm of bubbles heralded the first major change in the environment of the vat: heat. Whereas before the vat had been pleasantly warm, the liquid very swiftly turned scalding. Not kill you flesh melting scalding, but hot coffee all over your body sort of scalding. It did not feel good.

Only seconds passed as the scalding liquid flowed up and around his legs before Rune decided he’d had enough and he swam to the roof and slammed his fist against it. There was no response. The heated liquid kept flooding into the chamber, flowing further and further up, as Rune burbled as he tried to let loose a scream of indignation. The searing liquid flooded up and around Rune, fully encompassing him. Rune thrashed in the liquid as the burning overcame him, slamming against the sides of the vat time and time again. He didn’t succeed in doing anything more than giving himself some more bruises.

After an immeasurable amount of time and hellish agony, the burning began to slowly recede. As the pain retreated, Rune found himself able to think—and he was angry. What the fuck? Wasn’t this supposed to be a video game? Why did everything hurt so much? Was this some sort of sick and twisted introduction to the game? What sort of sicko had designed this?

Rune waited, almost expectant, for the next thing to go wrong and cause him a ton of pain. Surprisingly enough, that thing never came. Instead, the liquid surrounding him began to lower. Then lower more. Soon enough, all the liquid in the tank had drained out through a single small hole in the bottom, and Rune was left standing confused in the empty vat. Only a few seconds passed before one of the patterns on the steel was shifted and exploded outwards, revealing a compartment filled with blue clothing, reminiscent of a wetsuit, except strangely textured. Picking them it up and deciding to try it on, Rune found that to his surprise the outfit fit perfectly.

As soon as he’d finished putting the blue, oddly textured skinsuit on another segment of the wall popped out, this time allowing a mechanical arm to extend forwards to present a PDA of some sort. A big, orange Welcome was written across the screen of the PDA. Glancing around the room, Rune saw that nothing else was coming forth from the walls of the vat. So Rune did what any decently technologically savvy person would do: he walked up and tried to tap the surface of the PDA. Unexpectedly, his fingers went right through the surface of the PDA. Giving it a closer look, Rune realized that it wasn’t a PDA at all. It was a hologram of some sort!

The screen of the hologram rippled and new words appeared across the screen.

“Greets, I am your Personal Assistance Artificial Intelligence, or PAAI for short. Would you like to give me a name?”

Rune frowned. Was this some sort of gift to him from whatever government had just put him in the vat in order to appease him? Rune was hesitant to accept the hologram from his tormentors at first, but then he thought about it for a bit. Back when he was still a stray he’d have undergone the same pain in a heartbeat if someone would give him a hologram for free. He was still pissed but he’d take a free hologram any day of the week. Better to play nice now and maybe they’d give him more free stuff. Shrugging, Rune spoke.

“Yeah, I’ll name you Paine.” The name wasn’t meant to be some sarcastic indirect slight, Rune had once had a friend named Paine. That was in elementary school before he’d disappeared. Rune had known better than to try and figure out where he’d went.

The screen flared brightly and shifted through several colors before settling on green. Words scrawled across the screen.

“Thank you for the name. You should collect me off the stand and insert me into your sleeve.”

The device’s walls that were projecting the hologram collapse inwards while rotating, swiftly balling up into a very small half inch by inch rectangle of steel. Rune, checking his sleeve to confirm that it did have a small compartment of some sort, grabbed the hologram off the mechanical arm that was presenting it to him before placing the chip in the compartment.

It slid in and locked into place with a click. Suddenly, a thought popped into Rune’s mind.

Greetings again Rune, I am Paine and have access to your neurological implants. I am capable of communicating with you telepathically and can directly transmit any needed information to your brain. If you are, however, uncomfortable with this function of mine, it can be disabled.

No, Rune thought, I’m fine with telepathic communication. You can’t mind control me or anything like that, can you?

Mind control and any sort of unapproved mental coercion are strictly prohibited under the 786 Amendment of the UIS constitution. Besides, your current implants are of an insufficient level to give any rider AI such as myself complete control.

Alright. Then I’ll be glad to have you along. Though, before we continue, what exactly is it that you are capable of?

Somehow the AI managed to transmit smugness through the flow of electrons into his brain. I am a PAAI. I am capable of a range of functions. I can keep track or utilize a number of wireless basic devices. I can personally pilot a single more complicated device into battle at your side. I will manage your finances and create a Galactic Credit Account for you. I can also access the G-Web, provided there is a nearby stable connection.

Wow. The AI seemed to be super useful. Rune was sure that later in the game it would be very, very useful. Unfortunately, however, everyone else would have one too, so it wouldn’t give him any real advantage over others.

So anyway, what am I supposed to do now?

Wait. It won’t be long.

The AI was right. Rune didn’t have to wait long before the front steel panels of his vat slid open to reveal a mostly empty room with only a pleasant looking, smiling woman sitting behind a steel, embellished desk. She was blonde, with huge dimples and a charming smile, the spitting image of a stereotypical receptionist.

Despite her typical appearance, however, her clothing was strange and futuristic, like nothing Rune had ever seen before. Her hat was like some sort of strange hybrid between a pork pie and a bowler hat, angular towards the front with medium length rims. Her coat, or at least what he could see of it above the desk, resembled an overcoat except with the collar twice as large and high. A grey, partly translucent pattern adorned the jacket, with bright orange highlights running down the shoulders towards the chest. Rune was so caught up in looking at her strange outfit that he almost didn’t notice when she cleared her throat and started speaking.

“Rune… Yahui is it,” she said, her eyes scanning the air in front of her, almost as if she was reading something before her eyes swapped back to him. “Artificial Citizen 1129123.” She paused a moment, almost as if waiting for something, then quirked an eyebrow and cocked her head before asking, “That’s you right?”

Rune gave his head a quick shake, attempting to clear his confusion and quickly working through her words. “Uh, uh, uh, yeah. That’s me.”

The woman swiped at the air a couple times before reaching into the desk in front of her and pulling out a simplistic, single pouch rucksack with the letters, “UIS” emblazoned across the back.

“This is for you, Rune.” The woman said the words with yet another charming smile stretched across her face. Rune paused for a moment before stepping forwards to take the pack. As soon as he’d picked it up, the woman pointed to the left to a pair of sliding steel doors.

“Now that you’ve picked up your complimentary starter kit, you can exit the facility to the left through those blast doors. If you have any further questions, you can refer to your PAAI.” With those last words, she smiled at him and waited, almost as if expecting him to leave. Rune glanced between her and the doors, a frown stretched across his face, the pack hugged in front of him like a teddy bear.

Rune cleared his throat. “Isn’t there supposed to be, you know, a tutorial or something? I thought this was supposed to be a game.”

The woman furrowed her brow, squinting at him and giving him a look as if he was insane. “A game?” She thought for a second before a look of understanding spread its way across her face. “Oooohhhh. You must mean the VR arcade. Yes. If you could just ask your PAAI to pull up the local map of the Red Belt…” She trailed off and gave Rune an expectant look.

Paine could you help me pull up this map she’s asking for? Rune thought the words as loudly as he could.

No need to shout, Paine said back, And yes. Hold up your wrist that has me in it.

Rune held up his right hand, and sure enough, a holographic map sprang up between him and the receptionist. After staring at the map for a couple seconds the woman pointed to a particular square that represented a building. It was on the outskirts of the map, away from the primary concentration of buildings.

“This is the UIS ACI center.” She looked up at him. “That’s where we are right now.” She looked back down at the map, glancing at it for a couple seconds before pointing at another square, further away, towards the center of the map. “That’s where the VR arcade is.” A glowing orange line connecting the two squares soon popped up. “And that’s how you’ll get to the arcade.” The receptionist flashed him another winsome smile. “Is that all then?”

Rune glanced between her and the map a couple times before speaking. “Uh, I don’t, uh, well, do you know of anywhere, uh, cheap to stay the night?”

The woman glanced down at the map again before pointing to another building. If you’re looking for a cheap hotel to spend a couple nights, I’d recommend the Rusted Rose. However, if you want more permanent housing,” she paused, pointing to another building, “then you might want to go to the UIS Office of Housing and Land Allotment. They can find you a cheap apartment or house to stay in.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Anywhere else you might need to go?”

Rune scratched the back of his head. “Uh, no, I think I’m good for now.” He paused, glancing at the door and then the woman. “Do I just… go now?” The receptionist gave him a friendly nod. After a brief second of hesitation, Rune headed for the door. “Alright, thanks I guess.” The blast doors slid open and with that, Rune stepped out into a whole new world. Back in the reception area, the woman smirked wickedly at the doors.

“I’ll give that one a month before he’s dead.” The woman said the words in a playful voice, talking about the death of a man more like a game than a matter of import.

Another voice breathed out of the deepest shadows of the corner of the room. “Oh, I think you might be surprised…”