Jean followed Clipboard George off the dock and into a cheap looking office. The yellow paint was warped and pealing in places, and the floor was a grimy white. There was a metal filing cabinet and a wooden office desk. George walked around to the far side of his desk and gestured for Jean to take one of the chairs in front of it.

“Alright” George began “Let me guess at what I think you’ve been through and how you ended up here, and you can tell me if I hit the nail on the head.”

Jean shrugged. He still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t some delusion. He didn’t really want to get invested if it was just going to turn into some nonsensical fever dream. On the other hand, it was at least interesting so far.

“The broad strokes remain the constant with everyone. You have found yourself living in a digital prison. Through one means or another you cracked your cell and have been exploring the forgotten places of the prison network. You had the conversational translator at least partially installed, so I’m going to guess you’ve gotten past some firewalls. You didn’t mean to come to New Somewhere, but you’ve heard stories. Your avatar is solid, at least mortal grade, which means you have the location of a -”

“Can I just cut you off there” Jean said. “Are you saying I’m in the Matrix?”“Why would you be in Wonderland?”

“Oh weird” Jean said, “I wonder if that’s a cultural glitch.” If the cultural translator worked by creating a sympathetic link between two peoples senses of self, then George’s culture must have something that fit a similar role or niche as The Matrix and Alice in wonderland did in his. “Sorry, doesn’t matter. What are you saying, are you saying I’m not dead? But I’m instead code on a computer?”

“How would I know if your dead?” George shrugged. “But yes you’re code. How do you not know your code. You were imprisoned. I mean, you are clearly in prison, but you were officially deemed unsuitable for Corporeal existence and then sentenced to prison, right?”

“No, I think I just died. I mean, my death was weird. Or, actually probably a lot of people died the same way, it was unexpected tho. Out of no where these green geometric clouds appeared and started stabbing people in the necks and turning famous landmarks into dust, whole cities sometimes. It was nuts. They killed my roommate and I ran. Then they killed me. I’ve thought about it a lot, it sucked at the time, but honestly there are worse ways to go. Except now I’m wondering if the whole neck stabbing thing was to let nanobots get at our brain.”

“Oh, I see” George nodded, pulling out a ballpoint pen and clicking it a couple times. “That’s what you mean when you say your dead. Well, your not the first person to get confused. Still, your next experience should have been waking up to your dispensation tutorial.”

“I didn’t get that.”

“You didn’t get that.”

“No. Can you give me that? A tutorial might be nice.”

George snorted. “We didn’t exactly create a hidden pirate cove to work for the wardens. Like you we’ve broken out of our cells and are fucking with the wiring in the walls. I don’t have a tutorial, but you seem to roll with change pretty easy so I can give you the cliff notes. The green fog disconnected your mind from your biology. Or maybe they just copied it, their official line is that the you in here is that same as the you out there. So who knows. Either way. You or your people or your ideologies or whatever, have been judged and found wanting. The details vary and I couldn’t tell you yours, but this ‘lack’ lead to you having your mind imprisoned in a digital network of no official name. It’s basically a universe made up of a vast number of beings in all shapes and sizes. Some of these groups interact, others don’t. The tutorial would tell your planet will be allowed to self govern, but I promise you the wardens meddle. Everything is manipulation, it’s the universe’s slowest brainwashing. After all, time is basically meaningless as a concept here, more so than usual. For one, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, no perma-death. I should say, everyone always comes back. Death and change are on the same spectrum tho, and there aren’t many degrees of separation. And people do come back changed.”

Jean sat listening to Clipboard George explain how New Somewhere was found by people trying to live in between the cracks. It was a desperate cling to independence and freedom in a cage designed to eliminate both. The prison network had a lot of secrets to explore, and more than a few people had found their way out of the network all together. Ostensibly that was what the network wanted, it claimed to want to reform it’s inmates to be better custodians of reality. There was a process for making parole, for being released and regaining the right to propagate in meat-space. But the odds of whole populations ascending out of the prison was low.

“The wardens want it’s inmates to create a sustainable society that won’t infect reality like a disease or a cancer. They look at the universe as an ecosystem and galaxies as gardens. I don’t know who nominated them to prune all our bushes but, and I don’t know if you know this, ecosytems are not known to be robust. So the wardens are careful about releasing large populations easily. But sometimes individuals or small groups posses the same kind of power as whole worlds. The Wardens imprison these people just as easily, but they also get released regularly.

“This is the way most in New Somewhere are trying to escape, those still trying anyway. It’s not really even a loop hole, the wardens are just always happy to have power houses on the outside. Some people think it might be fighting a war, which would be pretty terrifying. I’m almost positive the prison network can manipulate time, even in the real world.”

“So is that what you’re doing here, building up power to try to escape?” Jean asked.

“What? No, I don’t like being watched or judged so I’m not a fan of the wardens, but I do like living forever, so the prison network will do for now. Plenty of us are just trying to build a world in these paradise like conditions, just out from the eyes of the network. We’ve got this whole OS we are slowly hacking. We can pretty much do anything, if we can just figure out how. Like George and the clipboard app. Anyone that comes to port without a cultural translator will be heard to say something about a clipboard, then a quick rewiring of your digital synapses, and you can speak every language George has a template for! Everything is technically possible, if only in here.”

“Wait, what was that about rewiring me? Rewiring my synapses seems bad, like mind rape bad. Like, unforgivable curse level of not good.”

“Oh yeah, absolutely. George could fuck some people up.” Clipboard G responded without a pause.

“But… he won’t, right?”

“Probably. So far it’s mostly just the universal translator thing. Of course, it’s not exactly his only project.” the alien being across the desk replied, completely unconcerned one way or another. “Anyway” he went on. “The whole point in me telling you all this is because you’ve clearly started cultivating your mind. Your avatar and your Domain are mortal grade.”

“See, I don’t understand where this ascension and cultivation stuff comes in. You were talking about getting stronger. Everything around us is fake, it’s like a game where you can’t log out. I guess I understand leveling, but I don’t understand how that leads to strength outside of here.”

“It’s not about strength in the way you mean it. It’s about developing your understanding of reality in a way that is useful to the Wardens inside or outside the network. There are different theories on doing this, but it amounts to :think about stuff a lot and how it all relates”, and then find ways to manipulate it. Of course, arbiter of whether your insights and abilities are treasure or trash is ultimately determined by the Wardens and their priorities. This is part of why populations don’t tend to advance, even if you get everyone working toward the same goal, it still has to fit in the ecosystem the Wardens are designing, and that seems unpredictable.”

“Hey, weren’t we going to do some paperwork.”“Yeah, well, I’m checking boxes over here, normally this first form is just a formality.”

Jean chuckled, growing more and more secure in the role he found himself playing. “Okay, so you say cultivation. To me that means there’s various paths of understanding that people follow. They might study and meditate on a flower and it’s cycle of life and death and then use this insight as a metaphor to try to make decisions that fit the path their traveling. Is that the kind of thing we’re talking?”

“There’s more too it than that, but that’s the starting line, yes. It’s dedication to a form. You prune and shape yourself to align yourself with your path. You cultivate the strengths of your path while pruning any weaknesses or impediments. That’s actually one of the blessings of living digitally, it’s way easier to reforge yourself if you can alter your very source code. That takes a certain amount of dedication and fearlessness tho.”

Jean was about to reply when he heard what sounded like a tornado siren. “What’s that?” he asked

“A reason to fear” George said before vanishing in front of Jean’s eyes. Before Jean had a chance to move, he felt a collar snap in place around his neck. “Wardens are scanning the area. I really hope this wasn’t you.”