Selen woke up in a dome of false grass and painted blue sky. "What? Where am I?" The last thing she recalled, she was at the temple, earning her first Craftsman level. And then she'd blacked out and appeared here. She stood up from the grass and looked around.

A door opened in the dome. A humanoid rat girl walked in, looking as confused as Selen felt. "Hello; I'm Pip. I just got a notice that a new player had arrived, but your record is glitched. New uploader?"

Selen's beak opened and shut a few times. "I've never seen your kind before. Am I a prisoner? And... wait, is that a Japanese accent? Are you from Earth too?"

"No, this isn't a jail, and yes, I'm an uploader. Are you just roleplaying here? I can do that." She coughed into one pink, clawed hand. "Hail, traveler! It seems that a summoning ritual has gone wrong."

Selen held up her own hand. "Time out. I'm serious, miss. I don't remember how I got here. Are you involved with the creature called the System?"

Pip said, "This is above my pay grade. Excuse me." She turned aside and gestured, making red and white windows hover in the air around her. Selen couldn't see what they said, or hear the words seeming to come silently from the rat lady, but it was the first time she'd seen the System appear in front of anyone else.

A griffin appeared from nowhere. It had rippling blue feathers and stood on all fours, with an array of mystic wards visible around it. It spoke in a female voice, saying, "I apologize if this is rude, but who are you and what are you doing here?"

Selen backed up. "My name is Selen Moonlit, and I was in Grandbridge just now, showing off a pool table. I'm really from Earth if that means anything to you, not this world. Or... wherever I am now."

The rat asked the griffin, "Brain damage during the surgery?"

"Surgery!" said Selen.

The griffin shook her head. "No, you're not my customer. I don't detect a security breach and Misha is looking into it right now. You just appeared in the user list and data storage, as though a whole lot of cosmic rays flipped a ton of bits in exactly the right way to make a new mind appear." She blinked. "And I am detecting a weird energy spike in that server center."

"And you're speaking English," Selen said. "I assumed that if I ever heard English again it'd be from some other lost soul. But you say you're 'uploaders'?" Selen smacked her forehead. "Oh. That explains part of it. I've been in a computer simulation this whole time, haven't I? All this stuff about the System, magic, picking a new life; it was all a tutorial after somebody froze my brain and scanned it into a computer, I bet. How many centuries in the future is it?"

Pip said, "Uh, it's 2041."

The griffin said, "I have no record of you existing at all. Well! I can't exactly call you a player of the Game right now, but since I'm not detecting any threats in your file I'm going to tentatively let you decide."

Two doors appeared. One was dark and gloomy iron, one a perfectly ordinary 21st century door of aluminum and frosted glass; and between them was the secret door in the painted dome that Pip had entered through. A modern hotel room lay beyond it. "The iron door will just plain delete you, if you don't want to exist. The glass one will take you to a holding area where you can hang out with some books and movies, no commitment. The hotel one will take you straight into my Game as a provisional customer. So long as you don't cause trouble I won't make you sign anything yet. Mostly because I still don't know what you even are."

Selen tried to gather her thoughts. She'd been used and tricked! Her family, her budding career; it was all a simulation! "Are you responsible for making up Bluemoon and Aunt Tradewind and the rest? Are they completely fake or was someone acting their roles?"

The griffin said, "I have no idea who those are; sorry. You might have memories from some other virtual world I don't control."

"So you do control this one? Are you supposed to be the local version of God?"

"I try to stay away from that question."

Pip rolled her eyes. "She's an AI. Look, have you seen 'Tron'?"

"Yeah. How about 'Sword Art Online'?"

The rat laughed. "We should talk once this gets sorted out. Yeah, basically that but don't worry about perma-death. Ludo here is a nice overlord."

Selen's head still spun, but she said, "All right, I'm going to find out what's going on. I pick this one." She walked through the hotel door.

Pip waved. "Take all the time you want. Food's down in the lobby and there're books a few floors up in the Tower, all free."

Selen thanked her, barely listening. She left the dome and found herself in a completely mundane Earth bedroom with a TV, an in-suite bathroom that was for some reason missing a toilet, and a bed with a mint on the pillow. The mirror showed her now-usual bird body. Below that was a basket of pamphlets with titles like "Dinosaur Adventures" and "Miyamato Serene Living". A fruit basket held a card that said "So Confused You're Here!"

Selen sat down on the bed, flicking her feather-tail under her. "Okay, what the heck is going on?"

So this was a virtual world? She stood again and walked to the window curtain to pull it open. She could at least get some idea of whether this was a cyber city or what.

She stared out at an impossibly tall white tower spearing a miles-wide cave. A man with a cape soared through the sky and a party of swordsmen were camped out by some stalagmites. The words [You have discovered Ivory Tower: Home of the University of Talespace] flitted across her vision, like a different version of the System.

Selen whistled. "Looks like a nice place to fly, anyway."

#

Meanwhile, a young man named Vonn woke up groggy as the world bounced and jostled around him. He yawned and stretched, then discovered his wrists were tied. A sound like "Nyaa?" came from his muzzle. He opened his eyes and found himself in a wagon, on a snowy forest road.

A battered Nordic man in blue said, "Hey, catgirl, you're finally awake? Bet you were trying to cross into the Empire."

Vonn looked down at his alarmingly full chest and tight leather vest, then over at the big dude with a gagged mouth, and finally at the village ahead. In a soft and purring voice he said, "Aw, man... I guess I can work with this."

While the guard on the horse ahead wasn't looking, he held his hands together and found he could summon a basic frost spell because their captors didn't think about these things. Or about cat people having claws. He beckoned to the boss dude and leaned close to cut loose the gag he wore. Vonn returned his confused look with a thumbs-up. Time to get this party started early!