The situation by rights calls for caution, but nature by urgency calls for boldness. So Todd looks to his friends for assurance, then places his palm on the smooth, cream-colored stone in front of him. As his skin presses against the cool grain, the reaction is brief, muted, but decisive: a fractal of energy (more a thing of texture than color) appears under his fingertips.

Then soundlessly, motionlessly, Todd is in another place. The room is an empty cube of slate blue stone. There are no windows. In the center, against the wall is a simple wooden trestle table with a thin but inviting mattress and a pair of folded, seashell-white sheets. Three of the walls have small recessed slits with quartzite crystals that give off a soft, even glow.

It takes a second for his disorientation to catch up with him, and he finds himself wishing dearly that his transposition had come with a ‘blip’ noise: it would have been welcome company. Especially since his friends have vanished.

Wobbling a bit, Todd reaches out to the wall for support.

Aside from the bed, the only furnishings are a table, a lidded box, and a reed mat. The fourth wall, to his left, is inset with an alcove; and the sound of flowing water striking stone echoes from it.

Recovering that same bit, Todd drops his hand then stoops his head and his expectations. The dimensions of the cube seem to be six and a half feet in each direction. (Two meters, in math) You might call it a room sure, in Tokyo. But in America (as far as Todd’s concerned) it’s not much better than a coffin.

“At least it’s bigger than my first dorm,” he sighs.

The bed takes up most of the length of the room but is frightfully narrow, preserving the better part of the scant floor space. In a resigned effort to inspect the space, he edges around it in exactly the sort of way he doesn’t really need to. His new table is shoved up against the far corner, but looks plenty light enough to move about. It’s small, square, and knee high: might be meant for eating or reading on, but probably wouldn’t be accommodating to elbows.

The chest is four foot long, three feet deep, and tucked up underneath the bed trestle. It doesn’t have a lock or hinges, just a fitted lid. The whole piece carries light, and slides easily into and out of place. All three pieces are made of the same light-colored wood, with a faint smell like an unpleasant marriage between pine and teriyaki sauce.

Todd had gotten used to worse. Pillow would be nice though.

Finally, Todd turns to inspect the alcove. Only three feet wide, but extending five foot deep, the adjoinment opens with a delightful impression and closes with unpleasant consequence. Lit by a dim version of the clear crystals set into the wall, the alcove is rough, rocky extrusion with cavely features and a checkerboard tile floor in shades of blue. A stream of water rides in through a fissure in the ceiling, crashes against stones and then down splashes to the floor where it follows a divot down to a fist sized sinkhole where it drains swiftly away.

Todd finds his way to a delayed gag. Shouldn’t this be the kind of amenity that demands a separation of concerns? But needs are needs, and these needs are immediate, so Todd makes himself a pint heavier, then a few pints lighter, and then pointedly avoids confronting how to tackle the other half of that biological coin.

He sniffs at his clothing again. “Couldn’ta left some soap?” He grumbles. Then, having managed to not get himself completely soaked, he carefully returns to his room, grabs the table, thumps down to a seat on the floor, and pulls the short table up to himself.

“There’d better be AIR in here,” Todd shouts to no one. He looks around again in the dim hope that he’d managed to miss some kind of door on the first go round. Nothing. His anger rises, “if you forgot to give me air, I swear I am going the be so,” rising to a roar, “COMPLETELY,” and then his shoulders slump and so does he. “Asphyxiated,” he whispers glumly.

The calming sound of the water accompanies Todd for a moment, then he grabs at his pockets. He dumps his phone (drained) the crystal and pills, his wallet (worth zero in Nexus whatsits) his keys and a punch card worth a free submarine sandwich. He deposits them on the table, then closes his eyes. Then he invokes his quest menu, noting that it’s becoming decreasingly unnatural to do so.

Active Quests

Zone sweet Home (easy) : Claim a private zone instance. (COMPLETE)

Satisfied, he tries to focus his attention on the completed quest. He hasn’t quite got the hang of this one yet, but after a few moments of searching, he manages to access the quest reward [Tutorial Care Package] and accepts it. Once again, Todd finds himself wishing for some kind of blip.

The [Tutorial Care Package] is a large wicker crate of fine quality. It appears without sound or displacement in the space directly above the table, tips unbalanced over the wallet he’d set down, then topples table, basket, and contents onto the floor.

Leaning forward and halfway up to a squat, Todd freezes with his hands stretched out and his cheeks puffed out in angrembarrassmusement. Or maybe auto-moronic-schadenfreude, that’s a new word right?

Laughing to himself, Todd sets down to his knees to set the bin upright, then he crawls over to collect the casualties.

His first and most welcome discovery is dinner. Two fist sized lumps wrapped carefully in waxy, fresh smelling leaves. Peeling back one corner of a leaf, he finds a pliable half-cooked dough. The scratch and sniff test yields an earthy grain aroma, and a careful pinched corner tastes nearly of bread as he taps it carefully at his tongue. He sets one aside, then tips his small table back upright and sets the other dough ball on it. A small wedge, wrapped in a scrap of cheesecloth, opens to a firm crumbly orange curd. Preliminary taste test is seventy percent on a ‘not cheese’ verdict, and instead more of a dry, high-protein micro-chamber honey comb. Todd wraps the cloth back up and sets it aside as the start of a ‘maybe’ pile.

Pulling from under his bed, he withdraws one fruit shaped like a pomegranate, (but wearing a banana’s skin) five raw cranberries, (huh, it’s really a cranberry) and a bronze lapel pin emblazoned with the word ‘participant’. The only other items that made it to the floor are a leather folding pouch with course grain salt, two strips of smoked animal meat, (does not taste like chicken) and a bracer made out of dense wood and fiber straps.

He tears off half of a meat and sets it on the table, then turns to the bin. The other arm guard comes out, and he sets them aside, then a round, matching chest piece which goes right with them too. He taps a finger on the armor, , then turns back to withdraw a set of clean linen clothing.

“Five dollar bet, underwear or washcloth? Oh nope,” he mumbles, setting down the long strip of rag he’d been looking at in exchange for a poofy set of trouser shorts stitched in with drawstrings. Then he sets the whole clothing pile neatly on the bed, and returns to the package to pull out the final four items.

One sharp steel knife, (a thumb in length) two wooden bowls, and a half-brick of firm white, “Soap!” he cries gleefully.

Ecstatic, Todd dumps his armor into the chest, then the remaining food into the bin, then shoves them both out of the way. Taking hold of the knife, he chops at a corner of the soap until a manageable chunk breaks off.

The rest, with minor complications at the water source, plays out like most any shower would. Then after ten minutes of chilly, fervent scrubbing, Todd capers shivering to put on his clean clothes and wrap himself in one of the clean sheets.

The wheaty lump is filling and flavorful, but loses points for texture. Two stars. The meat jerky is mild flavored and smokey, nothing fancy. It’s still meat though, three stars. Setting his water and food bowls aside, Todd pops one cranberry in his mouth for dessert, regrets it marginally, then washes his hands off in the cave. Alcove. Alcave? Not important.

At around that point he notices an insistent chiming noise coming from the back of his brain.

Active Quests

Factory Defaults: An error has occurred. Reset room temperature defaults. Reward: 50 Nexus Coins

Strange.

It’s true though, it had been getting a little warmer in the room over the past few minutes. Todd looks over the room and notices a section of the wall where a square of red glows from under the stone. Touching it, (with a little mental something extra) causes a new tutorial window prompt to appear.

♨ Room Setting Presets Error: Failed to fetch optimal temperature presets for category {HUMAN}. Current temperature setting may be inappropriate.

Reset to Standard Default?

Yes

No

Todd inspects the panel for a brief moment, then shrugs and confirms ‘YES’. Then the information panel, the wall panel, and the quest all complete, clear and vanish.

And that’s it. End of day. He’s done.

Todd sits at, has been sitting at, the edge of the bed for a long time. He’d tried to lay down, to shut his eyes, to sleep. But today’s been a whole lot of heavy and that don’t set down easy. He scratches at his black hair, feels the cleanness of it.

Screw it. He reaches over to grab his discarded shorts, fishes through the empty pockets, then sweeps across the floor until he finds the crystal and pills. The healing pills go in the empty bowl with a skittering ping, and Todd turns the [F – Root of the Limitless’ Promise Cultivation Manual] over between his fingers. Rolling his eyes, he plants it against his forehead and starts rooting around for a state of mind: the fleeting one he gets when he’s touching the interface to the System.

Sit.

Assume the Lotus position.

Breathe. No not like that.

Breathe like this.

Focus, catch it: the thread. So fine it can’t be touched, but you got to anyway.

It’s like the bottom dropped out on a trapdoor to the remodeled basement of a memory. There are no visions, no voices, just a learned familiarity pared bare of context: muscle memory in a can. He’s on the verge of something, something new. Todd shuts his eyes, feels the cycle, feels his lungs shudder and heart beat in anticipation. Goose pimples ripple down his arm, following a captured thread. It weaves down his arm and back to his heart, but that’s not enough. It frays, nearly snaps, but he pulls again deep from his diaphragm and replenishes the line. His lips curl upwards as he recognizes it, the vital feeling from eating the Limitless’ Berry. It’s an energy that feeds more than the body, and it thrills him as the thread spins down from his heart to his belly. He sends the Cosmic Energy down towards his gut, feels it twine around his intestine, and it’s bracing.

His neck tenses, his arms are shaking. Todd’s never worked so hard to do something as simple as keep on breathing, but he’s got to. He knows intuitively that he has to complete this loop back to his heart. Loops are stable, but a loose thread can lash and damage. Don’t stop! Todd’s fingers curl into fists, he grits his teeth and flares his nose. Then the Cosmic energy spirals around a knot and rises back up, weaves past his stomach, between his lungs, and joins his blood to spill back into his heart.

Eyes shooting open, Todd is wracked by sudden coughing. Aches bend him over, and pained heaves bring his hand to his mouth, where it speckles with dots of blood from his lips. Finally, he collapses and rolls over onto his back, kicking out his feet from under him as he gets the basics of respiration back under control.

“That can’t be how it works,” Todd laughs. Then the glow of his status menu appears and his eyes drift down while his grin ratchets up. “Well howdy there, level two.”