The voice came from right next to my head. I turned and saw a small creature hovering directly in front of my face. The annoyance of still having the rectangle text box in the middle of my vision made it difficult to see the fluttering creature clearly, "Who's there?" I backed my head away from the small creature trying to put it right above the textbox in my vision.

She noticed my discomfort with her being so close and moved back a few feet, "I'm your guide, Teddy." She said with a sweet, motherly voice. She continued to hover nearby but gave me time to collect my thoughts and articulate my next question.

"If you're my guide can you tell me what is happening with this floating rectangle?" I had at least a dozen other questions, but I had to get rid of this thing.

"Of course," she said as flew to where her head was just over the text box she had a kind face and pointed ears, "This prompt is asking for your preferred name while on this adventure. It can be your name from your life or a variation of it or you can make one up, but remember this is a fantasy adventure and your name will appear over your head for others in this world. Just focus on the textbox and think about your answer to the prompt and it will populate the text for you."

I did what she said and my given name popped into my head like I was filling out a government form. "Theodore Lambert Cohen" appeared after "Name:" and a button that read "Confirm?" appeared on the bottom right of the rectangle. I heard a laugh from the fairy-like creature.

"You want to use your full, regular name on this fantasy adventure?", she laughed again, "This is what everything in this world with the ability to speak will call you. Won't you feel like you're in trouble the whole time?"

I thought about deleting my answer. My name and the confirm button disappeared from the textbox. "Wait. Why do you keep calling me Teddy even though I haven't chosen a name yet?"

"I'm your guide. I know almost everything about you. Now pick a name so we can move on with our afterlives." she said a little sassier than I would've liked.

Only a few people my whole life ever called me Teddy and I wasn't overly fond of it. For some reason, it didn't bother me when she said it though. I refocused on the prompt and thought of my answer. Just "Theodore" populated this time and I focused on "Confirm?" thinking about clicking it. "I like my name," I said and was relieved when the box disappeared.

"More like Theo-snore," she said under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear it.

I looked over at her and with my rectangle-free sight, I could finally see what she was. She looked a lot like a sweet older lady who had been shrunk down to about half of a foot, but with fairy wings.

"Well, at least that is done," I said as another rectangle appeared in my vision, "Darn it." This one was asking for my class selection but didn't have any options to choose from.

"Don't worry. I will walk you through class selection and then those scary rectangles will leave you alone," she said again a bit sassier than necessary. She continued, "I will ask you a series of questions and your class will be based on your answers. Let's do this rapid-fire style so you don't overthink it."

Why was my guide so sassy? Oh yeah, I thought to myself, because I am sassy and she is just a pain-killer fueled construct of my own sub-conscience trying to get me through my coma. "Fire away," I said agreeing to her terms.

"Would you rather sneak your way into a locked building or sprint into battle with raised weapon and voice?"

"Sneak"

"On a scale of one to ten how magical would you like to be?"

"Lame TV Christmas Movie times pi."

"Is it more important to be able to take a lot of damage or deal a lot of damage?"

"The best defense is a good offense."

"Lutestring, bowstring, or heartstring?"

"Bowstring," I said, and as soon as I had answered the rectangle disappeared. Two stacked bars appeared in the bottom right of my vision. There was a red bar and a blue bar, "Is this for my health and magic?"

"Yes, Teddy, and let's hope that your class is what you actually want. Some of your answers were strange, to say the least. You should be able to open your menus now. Just focus on the word menu in your mind," she said giving off a cranky teacher vibe.

I did as she said and focused. Suddenly my whole field of vision was overlayed by a semi-transparent menu screen. I could just barely make out my surroundings and could still move, but as soon as I focused on my surroundings I popped out of menu mode. I focused again and the menu popped back into view.

"This is your main menu screen it will always default to your status, but you can also focus on the words like 'map' or 'inventory'. You'll get additional options later on, but these are the basic ones," she explained plainly as if it was normal to have a mind-controlled menu system.

I focused on my status screen and was pretty confused at what I saw. It read:

Theodore: Level 1

Thief Arrowmancer

HP: 50/50

MP: 50/50

XP: 0/1,000

"I've never stolen anything in my life. Also, am I supposed to magically steal stuff with arrows?" I said looking at the sassy fairy woman a little indignant.

"Cool your jets, Teddy. It is actually a pretty good class and you aren't required to steal anything even though you could be good at it." She kept a calm tone and continued, "Plus, you have the option to use magic and even attach the magic to your arrows so depending on what spellbooks you are able to find you could have quite a bit of flexibility in your build."

"Spellbooks? Where do I find those?" I asked excitedly. I was way more excited about the possibility of being able to use magic than I was about thievery. I'm not a perfect person, but I'd like to think that I am pretty good or at least good enough to not take what isn't mine.

"Spellbooks can be found in any loot you find in this world, but it is rare. You're more likely to find scrolls. You will find loot in containers such as chests, boxes, bags, and pretty much anything that can hold items. It is important to keep your eyes open for loot containers of all types. Although, the most common way to get good loot will probably be by searching bodies."

I was intently listening and the questions were piling up until she spoke of looting bodies. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What bodies? Like people bodies? Dead people bodies?" I said starting to feel a little queasy at the idea of looting corpses or really even just seeing dead bodies.

"Well you can search the alive bodies for loot, but that's called stealing and you didn't seem to like that idea. Plus, once you kill them, they don't care what you take," she said.

"I won't be killing anyone. Do I really have this much evil in my brain to fuel this coma-induced nightmare?" I asked more confused than before about what was happening right now.

"Evil? I'm not talking about killing good guys." She seemed offended at my use of the word evil even though she had just casually mentioned looting corpses. "Teddy, I expect you to only kill the bad guys in this world and they aren't real people. This is like playing a game."

"I don't want to kill bad guys either. I don't want to kill anything." I said as anger started replacing the abject horror. I never killed anything my entire life.

"You have to kill the bad guys. Otherwise, they will kill the good guys and you will be to blame. You are the hero of this adventure. It isn't much of an adventure if the good guy just farts around while evil roams free." She was sounding real preachy for someone championing what most would call murder.

"I think I'll pass on the murder," I said trying to match her level of sass, "even if it is like a game."